You Paint

i.
You paint.
This is something I didn't know.

In eighth grade you sold a painting
for a hundred dollars.
You were fourteen.

You paint,
and this is something I didn't need to know
to be drawn to you,

but if I had known
it would have helped.

ii.
I paint
but not well.

I have a burlap sack full of big rubber tubes
and brushes that are stained and hardened with use.
I use an old cutting board as a palette
and have several pads of canvas paper
for the days when I feel I deserve better than just
paper.

I paint during the months when words don't serve me right;
I paint when I have something to say but I can't;
I can only
see it.

iii.
You don't use words.
Not as art at least.
I don't know what this feels like,
and usually I pity those who never play with sweet chocolate
and bright sounds
on paper.

But you paint
and only paint.

And it finally makes sense to me how someone
with as many bright sounds as you
could stand to not put them on paper.

You have more than I do-
more than just the rich ideas of colors
and feelings
and insubstantial thoughts that I can never quite trap.
You can hold these colors in your hands
and make the insubstantial so concrete
that someone handed your fourteen year old shaggy headed self
a hundred dollars
to make some magic.

I can't believe I ever pitied you.