early sunshine
the row of foot-high box trees
green teeth
© Rachel Green February 2025
II.VIII
Among her coloured paint and empty tins
is half a can of walnut varnish bought
to seal the frame of early charcoal sins
she made when life studies were taught.
She had used half to mix with pigments found
around the flat and scraped from window ledge
and with her pestle and her mortar ground
into fine powder mould and muck sink-trap dredge;
for like the painters of medieval times
who mixed with albumen the bones of worthy dead
to illustrate some holy text of half-remembered crimes
and fill the reader with some existential dread.
© Rachel Green February 2025
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