After “Woman Catching Fleas” by Maestro Jacomo
She gathers her materials: canvas, acrylic, brush.
Loneliness has never been a friend,
still she can’t help but love the tremendous
way it makes her feel: aching, cold, unloved.
A one-sided relationship is still a relationship, right?
So she writes love letters back and forth to herself, of dreams,
of promises, of a dead fly she suffocates
in an empty paint water cup. She uses the cup later
to paint a scene all in red: mountains
and clouds and hearts dripping with
catalysts.
The painting is melting, eyes running
like candle wax down an immaculate cheek,
the flame that once cast it in shadow now flickering
in heat radiating from canvas.
Soon it will be gone. For now,
it has only become something else. Something
more lovable than the original,
because flaws are what make us human and humans
are what make paintings
and even if it will someday dissolve, it hasn’t vanished yet.
When it’s done melting she starts anew,
laying canvas with brick to create something more permanent:
a ruin.
The brush dips in the paint, but the water
is too cold so she adds more white, for warmth.
Fanning across the painting it runs like an avalanche of color,
drowning out the canvas.
The white screams too loudly so she covers her ears with paint;
when that isn’t enough she breaks the paintbrush in half
and plugs them.
She still sees screaming.
She throws the palette at the painting and it muffles everything for a second but when it slides
down there is more white falling
and she no longer can carve out
a bubble to breathe in.
Julia Volpp is from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been published by The Alcott Magazine and has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.”