Love Letter for an Art Major

You’re working on your latest assignment: some
hot glued mess pulsating with discarded plastic,
neon Gatorade bottle caps and fish-scale-silver
soda can slivers we collected on a walk one day
gummed together on the plywood,

and I don’t really understand what you’re doing,
so I poke around your room instead, fiddling
with the stuff on your shelves and walls.
You only display that which makes you feel something,
heavy canvases thick with acrylic paint

and monochrome photography of vignettes like
shattered gumball machines and dirty shoes, all the things that
I don’t get. I sit down on the floor and watch you paint.
The window is open, letting in the creamsicle sunset,
and everywhere the orange melts is sherbet pink and sweet as blush.

You, backlit, cut through the sugar-breath of color
and slice a clean black form across the room, opening up
the canvas threads of proximity to the oil-slick of your figure,
and this, yes, this confuses me too,
but I love it all the same.