Mark Rothko's fine bright colors on my wall. Blurring between colors, frayed, wavering
rawness in spite of the print's quiet brightness. I wanted something to both remind me of
you as well as hacking you from my life. I stood outside Chicago's Art Institute,
assuming you meet me to share the Rothko's. You never appeared and I hadn't the heart
to stand before his work without you. Alone, its solitude merges with loneliness
Betrayal: too pretentious a word. Makes me want to retch, sickness sprayed across the
steps of the Institute. Depressed, I wanted violence: claw apart with bare, workingman's
hands and fingers, the Institute's lion sculptures, their superiority suggests you. We
cleaved (clung together) for months, years, eons. Who the shit cares for time these days.
We're either filled to our edges with it or harrowed with sharp equipment to break apart
the earth. Either way it means pain. I bring to you a meat cleaver, one to sever with broad
blade our bonds, though past. A warrior cleaves through enemy territory, laying low the
mass they command and master another's hold on history. The only blood: blues,
oranges, yellows, blacks, and greens of his canvasses. He razor-slashed his arms until
blood pooled at his corpse, an accomplishment for creators and visionaries---what you
and I aren't. I phoned you and asked why the no-show. Cat's up the tree and won't come
down, you said. Time for the split. Mark's work grand, tragic. Our lives together simply
wasted. Out damn narcissism, it makes puny loom grandiose.