I have traced your steps for years, since I first saw your ships sailing on the sandy shore, still looking as if they had found their perfect reach. You sang my madness on canvas with green fiery torches of trees exploding from gently rolling hills. You created the same masks as I as you painted your stark reality in cheery yellow and orange, lying to your brother that all was well. Your portrait mirrors mine with eyes that see the world whirl by in excruciating precision (even the parts which make most cringe). When I have exhausted myself, I comfort in the tenderness of your brush on the faces of men and women working themselves to early graves. A building for you alone in Amsterdam, your final work hangs downstairs; a tangled jumble, swirls and slabs of pigments and oil, ultimately ugly from five feet away. Wandering through, I ended up three stories up and a hundred feet away. The wheat waved in the winds, and the larks took flight as if spooked by the farmer's dog. Glorious light from the Auvers sun filled the space between your vision and mine. I sobbed for you then, to have been torn from self so violently that if you shouted to yourself you likely couldn't hear. Small wonder you pulled the trigger, because the wheat field you spread on a table-sized landscape sat beside the graveyard where you and Theo lay side by side. As I walked along, the only place you could see the field and the paths was with your back against the wall. Family in Amsterdam, too few friends in Paris, the short walk to the cold respite of the Church no longer worth the breath spent. Nowhere else to go, nothing else to see, too little paint left to try again.
"Starry starry night...paint your palette blue and gray..."