Your hands were paintbrushes birthing art
upon my hide, creating new landscapes over
the tired contours of my barren canvas-skin
And before the air-whispers could begin to
dry the paint, we smeared it between our
bodies in a mess of colors sticky enough to
glue our hearts together

The colors stuck to our bellies and spattered our
faces in a brilliant deaf cacophony – and we nailed
ourselves to a cheap craft store frame that we
believed could marry us forever
But as soon as we hung ourselves on the
gallery wall, the claustrophobia of the frame
constricted our smiling exhibit-faces and our
painted toes yearned to touch the ground

I caught your bitter tears in the palms of my
hands and dissolved the paint between us
in a faded erasure of the art that declared us
One. We escaped the confines of the cheap,
unstable frame and I said my goodbyes without
catching your eyes

And we still wear discolored marks of
our once-was-masterpiece like nostalgic scars
that have stained our bones with once-happy
hues and pigments of regret