A study of a painting you gave me when we were fourteen

your painting from freshman year 

is still up on my wall. everytime i turn over in 

bed i see it and i think, absently, 

i need to take that down, throw it away, 

make some use of it, and then 

i leave it where it is. 

i haven’t touched it. 

                                                                                                                        i haven't 

                                                                                                                    touched you 

                                                                                                                              — 

i haven’t touched 

your sheets, 

your walls, 

your clothes. it’s something about that line 

in the crucible about 

cutting one’s hand off before reaching for something 

revered and feared and 

needed. 

the painting is an interpretation of van gogh’s starry night. 

his was shades of midnight; yours is almost taunting hues of pink and yellow — your old favorite color and the undertones of your hair — 

so i look at this painting and i see what it looks like to be something 

                                                                                                                      you used to 

                                                                                                                    love 

and what it looks like to be something that 

lies 

                                                                                                                   just beneath 

                                                                                                                 your surface. 

when i take off 

my glasses the colors blur together at the edges and 

appear orange at places. 

and                             

                                                                                                              i'm 

that orange, that transition 

between someone you love and

                                                                                                   someone you 

                                                                                                 hold beneath 

                                                                                                your surface; 

i’m an undiscovered aquatic creature, 

you’re the atlantic; 

i’m love, 

you’re loss. the orange is liminal — 

transitional and transactional and 

alone and unnatural. someone 

should be there; no one is. the halls and walls are 

                                                                                                                          alive. 

i face opposite the painting when i sleep; 

it watches over me. i cover the windows 

with tapestries in fear of stalkers peering in and 

seeing me uncurated and raw, but i let that paper 

voyeur stare at me all night. i pretend that 

                                                                                                                       it’s you 

to induce nightmares during 

stretches of numbness, when i need to wake 

up 

                                                                                                             violent and 

                                                                                                          blood-hungry 

just to be able 

to get out of bed. 

this painting is a ghost; this painting is a 

hanged witch. 

its edges are curled up and your dogged arrogance 

seeps from the paint like lead fumes and 

                                                                                                                  it lulls me to 

                                                                                                                 sleep. sleep 

                                                                                                              that, in an 

                                                                                                           alternate 

                                                                                                         universe 

                                                                                               somewhere, is 

                                                                                                death

About the Author

Rye Hayden is a teenaged author, poet, and general creative who writes about the devastation both commonplace and inherent to the human experience, often through a horror-adjacent lens. This piece is about an old best friend.