The Artist

For Jo. I could never be as strong as you are. Keep pressing on, because your blessings are planned in great abundance. 
 
She is beautiful brushstrokes
as if her mother blended blue and green to create a pallette for her eyes
and carefully pinpointed each freckle so that watercolors wouldn't run down her face
whenever she scraped a knee or got picked on at recess
she was painted with strong lines
rigid Picasso
with a heart like a Monet
and dreams painted in Van Gogh's Starry Night
She can paint a sunset with her laugh as she strolls happily
leaving paint footprints toward her tomorrows
The Artist
painted her own prince
A canvas draped in America's flag
with a young man
and his beating heart
as an open home where Jesus kicks off his slippers
and resides behind the welcome-mat door
She painted teeth perfectly aligned like the stars and the moon
She painted a Thor look-a-like so she'd always have a hero at her side
She painted the winner of a heart and soul battle who would
sing any battle song just to win one single Mona Lisa smile
from her and her beautiful painter's eye
She cries as she strokes the brush down the grainy frame
She knows it will never be the same
She knows that God's not to blame
She knows that he's not in it for the fame
or for his good name
She just wishes that someday
he'd walk out of the canvas
and take her hand
That they'd do a ragtime dance
that they'd live out a music box fantasy
She says, "I wish he was here with me"
and she continues in her colorful creation
Because she knows that someday
he will come out and say
that he loves each line and arc
that he always thinks up sparks
each time one of the stars in the flag mentions her
That each day when he thinks it's the end
when it's more difficult than he could even pretend
 He sees a growing trend in the drumbeat of his heart
Like a Morse code mark
They spell out each letter
that leads him back to thinking of his love letter to home
Because he would crawl in the muddy rain
He would go thunder lightning insane
He would make it through hurricanes
Just to hear her voice in that once a week phone call
and she paints the sound of his voice
and the feel of his skin
and the way it makes her feel to hold him
she paints his silence
and his laughter
she paints his most trivial triumph
to the best days of his life
She paints her prince
and she holds her canvas tight
waiting for the day that the man will come to life
and hold her under the moonlight
and she'll know that it's just right
because she painted that moment
into existence for her own sight
and there he'll be
the soldier fighting her war
And she painted till canvases tore
but now she speaks softly
"I know what all those crooked lines were for"***