The Portrait

The Portrait

The Portrait

I wasn’t always like this. I learned
composure the hard way. These were not colours
I ever wore until he dressed me. I favour drabs.

It’s not likeness, more my mother or a sister.
He’s elongated my face. He painted me before,
tense sharp lines, my face cut like a jewel

Into a hard triangle, an unsettled dazzle of indigo,
vermilion. When he uncovered the canvas I felt
like the time I caught myself in the mirror

and it was her face. The odd thing is they never met.
It’s in the bones, he said, like disease.
We are each other’s home now, and held me all night.

There are worse lives. He calls me the companion
of his soul. Of course he cheats with models
but one of the consolations of age is a solid marriage.

He traces the notch below my throat with his thumb.
He says it is an almost perfect V. Though
I know it isn’t, something stirs between my hips still.

When he paints me I see a smudge there like a bruise,
as if he wants to make his mark, a ruck
against artifice. He leaves the background dark
for our secrets. I love him well enough. He stays.