Body Composition
You wanted me to make you
art, capture the way you breathe
stars from the sky, disappear
into the folds
of my nightgown. I painted your eyes
in gold, dark with confessions, your moon-thread
skin, white as dandelion-floss. Your colors bled
together, sang your currency of wind
and wine into my open palm. Your pearl spine
caught the light as you left, lips bright as blood-
drops in the snow: I blended you
into shades of blue. Soaked my brushes
clean. Washed your web of colors
from my fingers.
Assessing the Damage
There is a quiet violence in the wind before a storm: sun-shriveled, bleeding
through the sky, permeating like so much watercolor. A wash of China
Blue, lift into pink, purpling dusk. We wrapped our lives in tissue-
paper coats, such small parts of something . My tea cups, their gentle
cracks. A fifty year old gramophone.Your records, turning into silence. This
longing, held together with the mortar of half a decade, made everything
hum at night. The house wanted to come alive. We lit the halls with candles, let them
burn until the ghosts began to rise through the slats. There are a thousand ways to
disassemble. We always chose: burn it.
Kathryn Merwin is a native of Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota review, Folio, Slipstream, Notre Dame Review, and Jabberwock Review, among others. In 2015, she was awarded the Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize for Poetry and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Milk Journal.