"Inspired by The Blood of Fish"

"Inspired by The Blood of Fish"

As I look down, I see the blood
surrounding the women and the solitary fish.
A voice speaks within my body
telling me to accept in the pain
because grief would make it easier for them to swim.
Even better, it allowed me to become the artist and paint.

She steps off the page, dripping in paint.
Walking slowly around her friend’s body,
she wonders why there is a fish,
and she begins to realize that it is harder to swim
within the cavity of blood
than to walk over the bodies writhing in pain.

The artist’s brush has entered her body,
Causing torment, anguish, and pain.
He not only created but used his pen to swim
within the concave self smothered in blood,
a sacred space that should be untainted by paint
or the presence of this rude fish.

She moves slowly toward the fish,
not enjoying the walk as she would a swim.
Not prepared for the movement, she slips on the paint.
The solitary figure inspects her body,
and notices that her friend is in pain,
a single soul not subject to death but still gurgling life’s blood.

The artist observes, realizing that his pain
can no longer control the movement his figures of paint
make as they exist on the field of blood
squirting forth from the veins of the lonely fish.
The soul enters in the body
of the broken, walking girl as if on a summer’s swim.

The creator looks like a lifeguard saying, “You cannot swim
in that curious liquid known as blood,
which will only cause you such pain
and heartache because of the rape of my brushstrokes and paint!”
He gazes upon the now inanimate woman and the dying fish
and realizes that his own soul is bound to the canvas like her body.

He realizes that she, the subject, has a body,
superior to his and not suspect to the nature of blood
because she exists, unlike him, within the medium of paint.