Paint By Numbers I refuse to paint green or gold across this canvas with miniature puzzle-like spaces and-blue numbers. As if the paint could hide the fear in my psychiatrist's face. If I could paint a deer amidst snow-capped mountains, my psychiatrist's words would not echo through the mountain peaks: "schizo-affective," he wrote on my chart. He noted, "suicidal ideation." I turn the cardboard over to my self-portrait, my frowning face sad as a baby's hunger. I paint pink cheeks, red lips. I refuse to try the clinic's bingo games. I will not have a card that fills up. I do not turn it in for a $5 canteen book. The hand that collects bingo cards is warm, gentle. I wish I could caress its lovely fingers. Instead, I paint a hand below my self-portrait. I paint numbers on the finger-nails, mixing each one with purple hues. They are eyes set adrift in a sunset, casting silent embers into a burning night like a blacked-out bingo card. copyright 2001 Crysta Casey |
Crysta Casey |
