Girlsong

The afternoon light unspools itself as I watch her paint. She’s considering the purple and blue watercolors for the canvas that’s already turned bruise. She has a confidence with a brush that’s absent in other aspects. But when she’s creating, it’s like watching one of those crazy sped-up nature videos of flowers opening in wide yawns to the inaugural dawn; at dusk’s edge, collapsing inwards like dying spiders—into cloistered, concave graves. To me, it’s like nothing into a sudden something, so quick, so easily missed—a furtive joy that requires sharp eyes and quiet. There’s an addicting sort of drama in watching her step into herself like this, of watching her know how to be for the stretch of an hour.