Page 157 - Dark Matter Issue5 Part II
P. 157
who licked the tips of my fingers
as if there exists a scent for sorrow, as if hungry.
Lives of Elephants
She wants to paint the horizon, the way it bends
at the edges, the way it becomes
an unreachable branch where light meets the river.
When the man dips her brush in the paint,
she wants it to be black like distant water.
She wants to show how she bathed her baby
under the yellow sun. The man points his finger
at the blank canvas and the people
whisper What will she paint? How
does her trunk move so precisely?
She wants to choose her own colors, to sweep
the brush in soft lines that remind her
of her mother, the trail they took each year
following the water, the leaves, like paint strokes,
but the brush makes what it always makes:
three purples flowers with stems and green leaves
she has never seen
