I am wild and funny, you said. 
No-one could look into my asymmetric
     bulb-black eyes
without a shudder of suppression.

You pinned my canvas bones, and said,
'let the paint take it's course'. 
From your delicate hands
     and house painter's brush,
you let it lose itself,

and you, in the infinity of my mummified breasts,
the swathes of a skull-cap, brimming with life
beneath it's pallid grey bind.

I've felt you on me, in me, returning again and again,
scraping away the past, impregnating me
with loaded brush; trying to erase and revive,
escape and submerge in me; to repulse and embrace
all history of paint, and woman,
in every frivolous, studied swipe.

Then, aborted.
Locked away from view
for two, ten, a thousand years…

Is it my half-grimace-grin that haunts
you, the promise of plastic, a jutting bone,
or the crimson tear
     emerging in a fracture of space?

I watch you shiver, night entranced,
amidst the rendered black smear
where my womb ought to be.
I call you, from your ruins,
naked, on the cusp. I wrap you
like a child in my amputated arms -
     caressing your forehead,

oil and bone is seeping slowly into your half-lidded eyes,
like a closing midnight kiss,
whispering,
'I am awake, Willem, you are sleeping.'