Last spring, we picked this painting for our house,
Its vivid foreground, brilliant spray of stems,
Hold flowers fading white as vase and back--
The absence here more striking than the blooms.
As I read my Sunday paper, white space grows.
Romance is dead, and you are gone like flowers
Whose colors drain while blooming. Empty chair
Yawns wide. I offer loneliness a cup of tea.
So quietly our colors leech from mind
Swept back on palette, artist in rewind
Unmixing them, to leave impassioned petals
Only memory, hanging, purple, yellow scent.
And when this artist finally unpaints
The us that never bloomed and never will,
He'll roll the canvas of my heart, bleached clean,
And fold his easel, then unlearn his art.
Lois Prozorovsky writes poetry and works as a medical editor. She lives
in the Midwest with her husband and two children.
