March 26, 2019

primer

For the first time, you wonder if you’ve brought enough paint. In your mind,
the room wasn’t nearly as large is it looms now, the ceilings less catastrophically high.
What you’d pictured was a tidy, nesty scene and your arms - outstretched - almost
touching the walls opposite. At each surface, you feel suddenly, freshly enfeebled,
which is strange because you are usually good in a crisis situation. Why now,
absent of catastrophe, a ticking clock nowhere in sight, are your doubting
the basal impulses that tugged so deliciously at your sleeves? Whatever gripped you
at the outset is still here, clutching the tail end of the handle, and it is enough.
Once you set the first stroke down, you’ll be shocked by your own steady hand, and
how the walls, newly touched, will reach for you, soaking up everything you give them.