- Portraiture
In this drawing, the girl hides behind herself. The sun is too much in her hands. In this drawing, the girl’s double wears green around her hair, a decision made
to tell them apart. To be so lucky. To remember a night with him— here’s a string, he said, pulling it between his hands. With her butter knife, he frayed its ends, then peeled the red line
away from itself. At the end of a black hole’s endlessness, every present layered onto itself. Shift one, and another shifts, his hand returns to the light switch. Here, in her studio, the artist
wears a long braid down each shoulder. She glances at the window, at her reflection laid out against the street’s bright leaves— both here, for now, though all the paintings look away. [End Page 668]
brittany cavallaro is the author of Girl-King. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, The Gettysburg Review, and Tin House. A recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she lives in Wisconsin.