She walked into a rainstorm of cobalt blue. Viridian green. Aquas. Emeralds. The colors fell around her with each brush stroke, spattering her clothes, her hair, the ground. She reached into the sky and brought down a shower of wetness with her fingertips. She fell in love with the droplets as they shimmered, trickling off dark green branches to brighten a cluster of mauve and violet flowers. Within this misty light, along a garden path layered chocolate brown and zinc white like icing on a wedding cake, she was to meet a man at its end. When it was time she brought his form into being. With a palette knife she blended dabs of lamp black and burnt sienna, smoothed it with sable hairs, then crowned his image with her fingernail by adding a glint of gold. She spent the remainder of the day with him, alone in her studio, his face staring back from the darkness. By late evening she knew him completely. He had emerged from the shadows of her life, arriving in this downpour of blue to save her. She washed herself in his presence with turpentine, then submerged her body in a hot bath. Up to her neck in a prism of bubbles she dreamed of their life together. She stepped from the water to walk naked across the hardwood floor. She had to see him again. Magnificent, everything she had hoped he would be. She draped her body in a warm towel and prepared a smooth bed of white canvas, stretching and sizing it for the next day. She wanted to be ready. Tomorrow she would paint the sun.
Excerpt from Light-Years in the Dark: StoryPoems (see more)