She was sky high and demanding. She was dragging him from continent to continent. She was backpacking and he was the soles of her feet picking along with her as he needed to be.
He had never been out of the state. He'd never been out of the house. He'd never been gone from his own clothes. He saw reflections of ceiling fans turning in the glasses on the table. And he was sober and drained. He was hissing himself to sleep feeling her leave.
She was bent on exploration. She was pinned to gravity. She was exploratory. Expanding. Experimenting. Expounding.
She was the eiffel tower. She was the great wall. She was parliament and big ben and stonehenge and pyramids and the longest waterfall in the world. She was dripping drip drop the cutting mounting water streaming and forking and forging and undimmed. Undammed. Unwrenched and unforgotten and unlost.
And he was supposed to compete with the world. He was supposed to look in her green and solid and unfolding eyes and compete with the world. And he knew he couldn't. He knew he wasn't and shouldn't and couldn't and wouldn't. Because he wasn't strong enough and he wasn't sane enough and he wasn't good enough and he wasn't free enough. And he couldn't compete. He couldn't top the world. He was fishing with shoestrings and moonlight and she was tossing the perfect lines over one and another of her perfect shoulders.
He painted but she wouldn't come out.
And they were selling and buying.
There was a turquoise one with belts of black and blue. And there was a star spun one with peacock feathers colored and stained in. And there was one that was only flawed and milky yellow. And the price tags were scathing and the canvases were hung and unhung and marked and unmarked. And he was reaping. He was reaping and taking and pocketing and dying.
But she was in the red with the gold flecks that he'd never seen before. Colors that existed in his head and then on the blank until then canvases and then not at all. But she wasn't for sale and he wouldn't hang her like he wished he could hang his pathetic and dripping wife from the basement ceiling. Because she was jarring him. And he liked it. And there was so much between them.
There was france and spain and germany and india and ireland and scotland and italy and country after country where they didn't speak her tongue but read her smile and posed for her photographs and felt her electricity when they tangled with her formed and light fingers.
There was sunlight and moonlight and stars and profound distances that he couldn't skip pebbles across and couldn't spread winks across and couldn't leap across and couldn't build planks across. He was like tumbling bridges over useless gaps.
Because it was useless and fruitless and pointless and failing.
She was sprawling and giant. And she was taking him over. She was rolling tanks through his gut and taking him hostage and handcuffing him with the simplest and strongest and gentlest rope that he had ever felt. And their silences were grotesque. Silences between them that were rampant and rivers. Silences of wars waging and unbound legs trouncing. Ammunition sparring. Planes rumbling. Sheets of metal becoming gravestones and death logs. She was waging a war in him and for him and on him and because of him.
And he wanted to paint her out but he couldn't.
He picked the colors that were her wrists and her elbows. He picked the colors that were her stains and her imperfections. But those colors turned into her lips and her hair and her eyes and her fingertips. And they made beautiful things. And they made ugly things that were beautiful in their ugliness. And they made drunken bourbon things that couldn't erase themselves. And they made boats to tumble on drying oceans or spilling oceans or weathered oceans or dawning oceans.
And he wants to paint her out and find her out and make her out and trace her out but she finds ways to go on. And he finds ways to go on. And they go on together like they should and shouldn't and should and shouldn't.
And the cobblestones of foreign countries melt in her sun. And the little old men in little old hats weep with lidless joy when they see her strafe and light across their world. And she impacts them. And she holds them. And she embraces them and tightens on them and squeezes them with her smile and her teeth and her eyes and her hands.
And the countries want her palms like he wants her palms.
And the world wants to hold her smile like he wants to hold her. Breath to breath breathing and quiet. Sitting and thinking and not saying a word because words become unbreathable and unmovable and unthinkable and unmakeable.
And he dreams of nights when they will sigh and think back to times when they were not and laugh and laugh and laugh. But those are dreams and he is always dreaming. And though the work is selling now like it hasn't before it is only because he is trying to paint her out. And he can't.
And the invisible daughter and the languid mother and the girl in the black sweater are ruining his life and he is still smiling when he sleeps. Because he is dreaming of her. The girl in the black sweater. The girl scented in love and air. The girl who knows how to touch his knee lightly and thick to make his heart stop for years at a time.
