Lamp of the Body

Charleston Green

46 chaRLeston gReen In the portrait of us against white—only our faces, our eyes— I painted our mouths on upside-down and screaming. The dark vowels left invisible were ice-cold, murky as a lake.What nipped at our skin in that imagined water was not grief but worry, its teeth grown soft with use.The portrait wanted to be of our voices, but I couldn’t mix the shade. No green-black was green or black enough. Instead, the space around our mouths is blank. Upside-down, we nearly smile. My eyeglasses lay beside my paints and brushes now, a still life. Through them, nothing is seen. ...