katie rose

they talk about van gogh and his yellow paint like

it’s a beautiful story, like it’s tender and artistic and sweet

to want to be dead. he wasn’t trying to swallow sunshine, to

pull happiness inside of him.

vincent was trying to end his life.

wanting to die isn’t beautiful, or tender, or artistic.

it’s painful and ugly and it’s awful, it’s so

awful. when i was a child i would peel the paper off

my crayons, so i could see them better, entire.

i would run my fingers along their bare rainbow,

gouge my fingernails in smooth channels, marring the

silky perfection. who could create with perfection?

i wanted my crayons to be flawed, because my art was flawed,

and i was flawed, and i didn’t want perfection.

i can still taste the waxy fragments that slipped between

my baby teeth, as i chewed my nails and worried

that i would never make anything beautiful.

i know what it is to want to die. it’s not beautiful.

vincent van gogh ate paint, and he tried to die, and his art said

no, i’m not done with you yet. my crayon drawings were

never more than childhood longings. i have no tortured muse.

but sometimes i look at goldenrod, dandelion, sunglow, canary,

and i understand, vincent.

sometimes it’s not about the beauty that’s still in this world,

the new horizons you have yet to see. it’s that there is ugliness in

the depths of yourself, and the only way to escape it

is to smother it with yellow.

but i don’t want to swallow my crayons. i want to swallow the sunrise,

to write one good poem. one poem that says,

i wanted to be dead. it was awful, and ugly, 

and i thought it would never end.

but i am here. i held on. i took a naked crayon in my hand

and i wrote one good poem.

i found my yellow paint. it’s not beautiful or tender or artistic.

it’s bitter and ugly and awful. but i’m going to spit it out,

rinse my mouth with a song about being alive,

about sunflowers and starry nights. i’m going to write myself

one good poem.