Revisionist Poetry – Art is Everywhere, v.3

In the cluttered hush of the studio
the inventory of things begins to list itself:
a cracked crate, a sagging shelf, a rolled canvas
breathing like folded skin in the corner.

A canvas draped over a chair, a clay hand in a jar,
colours spattered down the floorboards like small suns.
Each piece carries the humidity of a night—
the tremor in the wrist, the oath whispered at midnight.

What do you do with these freighted things,
these stacked affidavits of trying?
Sell one to a polite stranger for pocket change—
let the money clink and the memory hollow—
or tuck them into boxes until the light forgets their names?

To let one go is to cut a sleeve from your coat;
to keep them is to learn to swim in a room that fills with work.
The choice tastes like copper; I barter with myself at two a.m.,
weighing a small painting against the cost of quiet.

So they pile up—leaning like unsent letters, whispering—
testimonies of nights I refused to sleep,
weather reports of failure and small rescue,
scattered evidence of the hands that kept trying.

I scratch the date on a crate, press a thumb to dried paint,
and the object becomes a map of the crossing:
how I learned to move from silence to shape,
how light taught my hands to speak.

If anything survives besides the paint, it is that journey—
the rooms I made to keep making, the stubborn, generous mess.