If I were an artist,

-Ruby Browning

I would make a bronze carving of my own brain

spend hours welding ridges and myelin and grey matter and nightmares that keep it

functioning, full, up at night

pull all my thoughts out in glass jars and plastic bags and place them one by one in my metal map

I’d visit it like I do my own mind, running

my hands absently over spikes

struggling to keep dust off the hope slivers.

place my love right there in the center, the core, something unwavering to build upon like concrete, the bones of a hurricane house.

It doesn’t look quite right without it, and if I were an artist, I’d go for realism, I think.

I’d finish my masterpiece and fall back exhausted, back aching, fingertips grown watery and numb. I’d leave my passion, my prize, to rust in the corner, abandoned the second a problem, a friend, a job knocked on my door, revisiting only what I feel I need to, what I think deep down I always will, and

in a year, a week, a night, my sculpture will be tarnished, coated in black grime and metallic dust, all except the love.

Standing proud, polished brassy and golden in the dying light by the hands that cannot leave it alone.

If I were an artist, I’d let people wonder what that meant, but I am no artist, so I must speak it plainly.

-I cannot feel love without dissecting it.