It's Still Life

His Pulse (a Six Sentence Poem)

The brush is a nerve,
an extension
of the tremor in his soul.

He does not
think of
sunsets
or heartbreak.

His eyes
closed,
his mind
a silent white room,
a peg in the wall of memory
holding fragments
he cannot trust.

It is only muscle —
the memory in his own arm,
it guides the brush
strokes,
a twitch becomes a river,
a shudder
becomes a cliff edge,

and the air around him
waits for him to breathe.

He does not
paint what he has seen —

he paints the map
of his own pulse,
a territory
at once intimate
and unknowable.

And when he steps back,
and looks,
it is always a moment
yet to happen
that he remembers.