I. I will be a gallery you have never gone to.
for hours on end you will gaze at me
and I will repeatedly reinvent your idea of beauty.
then, one day,
I will speak to the ingredients in my paint –
to the chemicals I can’t pronounce but am perpetually learning
how to use without poisoning anyone,
to the things that make me me.
I will do so with intent to inform not overwhelm
but maybe you won’t want or know how to soak in what I am saying.
maybe it will sound too much like your shadows
or your exes
or a movie you saw one time that you really don’t want to see again.
you will be holding my thigh at the time,
and you will release your hand by millimeters and I will notice your shrinking.
It will make me recoil in return.
II. I will admire your brush strokes.
for weeks on end I will stare at you
and I will sing nothing but your subtle gradient scale.
then, one day,
I will speak to the ingredients in your paint-
to the lead and then to the chips and the cracks too.
I will do so largely to be suspenders
(or thumbtacks
or anything else that holds you up
the way you’ve always wanted to be held)
but sometimes you won’t want to hear all of that.
sometimes,
it will sound too much like the choir
of those who have entered your life before me
and maybe hinted at the things I am hinting at
but in a way that made you feel hard to love-
so now you associate that with me and
I will not be thinking you are hard to love
but your brain might trick you
into thinking that I’m thinking this
(which is almost the same thing or at least plays out the same way.)
and I know
I can be really real in a world where reality
is just another kind of TV show
and so my real feels too real really
and my honest honestly too honest.
I won’t sugarcoat anything.
there will be no artificial sweetener and
you will be used to high-fructose syrup at this point so
my sweet won’t taste sweet enough.
you’ll want something else but you will still want me
but I am not so good at stunt doubling myself.
I’ll want to stay around
but the suspenders only work when you put them on and
the envelope only closes when you lick it.
& 