Art is a storm.
Paint waits to wash away the sky.
Splatters start as sprinkles,
falling slowly.


Paint pools in rainbow ribbons to
fill the holes of a cracked street
where lightning once struck.
Chemicals hang in the air
chokes out all other senses,
like fog in the early morning.


In the midst of the storm
in fury and raw power
paint splatters the walls as
I’m sitting in small town Wisconsin
listening to the same lecture from Laura
about how art will get me nowhere and a career like nursing is so much better.


But the paint, my paint,
isn’t waiting anymore
it washed the sky clean long ago.


I’m the first one in my family-
an artist.
I’d write on the walls with cosmic crayons
because everyone else was angry.
‘Make sure to rinse your brushes!’
Ms. Debauch would yell.
It had become the only rule I live by.


The gray wall of loneliness,
a familiar sight to my soul.
I’d swim in puddles of paint
and dance in solitude,
a sociable hermit
seeking only the company of colors.


The spectacular future looms on the horizon of tomorrow.
‘Semper magis tempus’
Is what I always tell myself
but the clock skips into another time zone and a second storm of seclusion is born.