You. I want to paint you. I want your beauty on the tip of my brush, smeared across a canvas so I can see down to your thinnest layer, not just the clump that you were on the bristles. You're a mess. You are oils and colors mixed together on a bumpy sheet, taking forever to dry. People get tired of watching you and they leave. You blame yourself for not drying fast enough, for not having interesting colors, for the bubbles and patches in your paint. I'll stay here and watch you. You are taking forever to dry, but my heart skips a beat every time you catch the light. I lose my breath every time a bit of you falls from the canvas and onto the floor. I tear up when gravity mixes your colors, creating purples and browns and greens. You may mix and change and smear before you dry, and I want to see how beautiful you are when you do.

You sugar-coat our future
With a cotton-candy kiss;
A sweet slip of tongue,
A chocolate press of lips

Your eyes yield a bittersweet gleam,
Your hair, tangled with icing grease,
But things are never what they seem,
Everything must go, all things must cease

My dear, your love is sweeter than all things sweet,
Your touch softer than all things soft,
I feel high on sugar when our lips meet,
But to a sugar low we are opt.

Blue,
This is the color of your eyes.

Hope,
This is what I see within them.

Black,
This is the horrible bit of hatred and sadness in the center of them.

White,
This is the color I see them swimming in.

Red,
This is the color that comes in tendrils beneath the pools of white, a sign of restlessness.

Love,
This is what I want to see in your eyes, and yet it is the only quality that I cannot find within them.

Perhaps I am a fool.

I hope I am a fool.