Acrylic Mistakes
Emily Kibler
If you look closely, you can see
the remnants of the girl I hid
behind a tree on the left
side of the canvas, her legs uneven
behind the defense of leaves I layered
to conceal the mistake. Or the way
her hair blended with the trunk
until I could not find her
start and the tree’s end, so I mistakenly
covered what should have been
her soft brunette curls with jagged
bark. In my head, she had a boy
in her hand, but when the paintbrush
met the canvas he was drowned
in a sea of blues and browns, a river
sprouting across the dry rocks
of paint that I once planned to be
his kingdom. Had he left the sanctuary
of my imagination, he would have towered
over the tree, pulling the hidden
girl from the safety of the thorny
grass into his translucent arms.
The girl—I should give her a name,
something sweet like sarah
or paige—would have been stuck
with one boot perpetually lodged
in the mud, her shin digging
into the rock for all of time,
as the painting waits to be released
from its pause in action. But perhaps
he was late to the portrait shoot
or maybe our girl kept
the painting to herself
and became the adam
in this small garden. Because now
there is no boy attached to her hand,
only that slightly muddy river degrading
the roots of her tree. His presence
replaced by a lone fish at the mouth
that appears from a distance
to be a shadow below
the water. Her feet are free
from thorns and the gash
in her shin is hidden
in the leaves, but if you know
to look, you can still see the life
in the painting. The thin arm
draped around the trunk, hand
reaching toward the river, and the small
red bird about to take flight above her head.