Existentialism

Existentialism

"In a certain sense all of us are running." - Kierkegaard


I watch her every morning during breakfast.
Her back against the bark, she sings
in the Oak’s shadows or maybe she's talking
to a mockingbird hobbling in a spray of leaves.
It’s unclear, but her mouth is open,
and her cheeks are pink with her eyes tapered.
It's the same everyday. This table, this coffee,
the same circling stir, the same oil painting.

Today I get up and take a closer look.
Her little hand lifts to her mouth
to cover a yawn the size of a pill,
a small pebble. She turns her head
and says, “Did you take my brushstrokes?"
She props to her knees. “The painter
wanted some texture, so you could feel
me lift from the wall. My dress should be dappled
and the grass, puckered. Where are my ragged clouds
and crinkled leaves? What is a painting without the paint?”

She stands up, and I can see she’s barefoot
and beautiful although her features are smeared
and she’s nothing, really, but a soft puddle of color.
She climbs the tree, and I tell her to be careful,
that this is insane. Standing on the tip of a twig,
she shouts, “Without paint I am nothing but a poster.
Can you please help me find my texture?”
I pinch her off the wall, set her on the lip of my coffee cup,
her legs slack over the rim like the strings of two teabags.

“If you were a poster could you do that?” I ask,
scratching an itch on my shoulder. She crosses her arms
which bleeds into the pink of her summer dress, and she
looks away in a pout, her bottom lip poking out
in a bristle's stroke. I look at the wall where she used to be,
the canvas now dripping like an awning after rain,
the Oak tree gliding like yolk to the floor.

“Why is it running?” I ask her, but she is gone.
Footprints path from the table to the pool of paint.
I felt her lift from the wall, and the painting is gone,
but the painter did his job. So, this is what happens
when you stare at art for far too long.

Outside it’s raining, and I can’t decide if I am the woman
who lost the touch of her skin, or the woman leaving
footprints on the sidewalk, whose face is dripping black.