After the screams
I was coming undone,
splitting at the seams.
I hauled all my watercolors
out of my brother's office.
I took the paintbrushes
and palettes of a thousand hues
lodged between his camo army vest
and his heavy shoes
and I sprawled out in the
spinach-green living room.
I painted
willow trees and silhouettes
and viridian snakes spilling from ***** lips.

At 2am I got up
headed to the deck
and watched the stars
Because sometimes I forget.
I let my nights
be slaughtered by sobs.

These nights, this view
It’s mine, you can’t have it.
Everyone needs a place
and this is mine,
this tiny nirvana,
2 o'clock constellations
in the dark purple bruise of night
are my home.

A pool of watercolors,
magenta, cyan, indigo, emerald and cerulean,
swells in my chest,
in the empty space between my lungs.
A drowning, a baptism.

Everywhere, in everything,
your unblinking ghost.
It refuses to dissolve.