A Lesson on How to Walk Away by Sarah Gay
Read by Conner Arnold
What am I doing here? Who are you?
The Girl drew her fingers across the dusty frame
of a yellowed portrait. Pictured, a woman positively
Resplendent in the throes of a cottonwood fever-dream.
Her smile split her tawny face in two, resembling the
Glittering meat of a cracked geode.
Her hair, a golden flick of the wrist,
Twisted in the wind and seemed to lift her from the canvas.
So . . . sickeningly carefree.
As delicate and airy as milk froth, or seafoam,
Or a passing thought.
Is it even possible?
The Girl sat and pondered in front of the portrait,
Burdened with thought; laden with fruitless desires and envy,
Over a moment captured by The Artist’s thick oils,
the tinctures, the metal pots filled with pigment.
The turpentine, the horse hair, and the twig
Crudely torn from a rotting tree in a dying forest.
And here, The Woman, too, rots; trapped inside of her
Decadent, damasked frame. And here, she must remain;
In the dark, in the cold. Preserve
The oils, and the tinctures; the pigments, and the turpentine
From yellowing and pustulating atop the splintering bones of the canvas,
Just as her flesh did, surely, all those years ago.
This is the destiny of a doomed species.
Curators of fleeting moments, dragon-hoarders of delirium.
And so The Artist, in his blue depression, clutches onto a
Single, desperate flash of this fantasy we call Bliss.
He twists it. He swirls his brush in yellows and oranges,
He paints it into her hair, and lies to you. She lies to you, too.
And you were foolish enough to spend your days staring
Into her eyes, waiting for her to raise you from your perdition.
But she is no angel.
She is only selling you the image.
And you pay with your livelihood:
In time, want, and envy of a happiness constructed.
Wake up, now.
Look around you.
It’s time to walk away.
