"when words became colors..."

I was twelve that Christmas
when all I needed
was the soft sable of brushes, the scent
of linseed oil, and the sound of a palette knife
slicing along rough canvas as it layered
colors -- warm and cool -- against one another

colors with names that danced across my tongue
lying heavy and comforting as grandfather's
quilt across my heart. i spoke them with
the reverence of a novitiate during vespers

These were my silent, willing companions
cerulean, ochre, burnt sienna, umber,
prussian blue, cadmium yellow, aquamarine --
I could bring them with me wherever I was taken
a different state, a different school,
with them I was no longer the stranger,
the new girl.

i tattooed myself with their essence, wore
them like badges against the emptiness of
not knowing who I was

in them, I knew, I was an artist, a painter an odd
and quiet girl with her head in the clouds and
smudges of cobalt along her cheek

I dreamed in an artist's smock and wore
eau de Cezanne in my hair -- words
became colors, shapes, shadows of what I
could not say, and colors lived in words...