Artist: Unknown 

Description: mirror 

The boy stands and the sunlight falls from his shoulders

Hunched inside himself, the gray of a lifetime, the gray of Sunday morning

Because he remembers the seeds in her lungs, he planted there so she would grow again

The roots that split her mind

The painting captured him long ago, and he looks again at it today

And he is the gray of age

He hears the whispers in the museum all around, endless nothings

“So lovely, so vibrant.”

“Youthful,” one says, and he almost laughs into the quiet

“Such a shame,” another says, “to never know.” 

Well, the artist (the butcher) chose the lack of context, so only the man can know, can’t he

It tore out his bones so many times, before he decided to keep them

The man, he knows, he knows the true title, because it flung him across the asphalt and scraped his body up again, and in the gore it found crimson red

And formed the flower petals

Vibrant 

Youthful

He knows that out of the corner of the canvas, a headstone stands, slated gray

A name on it

Crushed him into the asphalt

But truly, the flower is the quiet, violent centerpiece, the boy shadowed by it

It twists as though with limbs, as though with contrapposto, the “s” shape of a torso

Of legs, still running today, he hopes

The golden face looking level at the boy, the true golden face a cradle

For death in the ground, a blanket for decay, a feast for the soil  

He knows, he knows

He thinks about the headstone

And about his Rose

And he knows the true title, doesn’t he: 

“Boy With Girl, Regrown.”