Poetry & Journal

She does not speak of longing — she paints it. Into the curve of a wolf's ear, the bruised light of a Scottish afternoon, the white space where words would be if words were ever enough. She leaves the canvas unsigned because the painting knows what she cannot say: that some things are not made to be finished. Only held.

You came before the words did. Before the brushes, before the gallery walls and the careful white frames — you were already there, watching from the edge of the woods that surround all childhoods. I have not tamed you. That was never the work.

Someone hand-painted this. Someone sat with a brush smaller than a pine needle and thought of you — specifically you — and painted what could not be said in any font.