I walk down to the river
and think about drawing
the clouds,
think about mixing watercolor paints,
purple and pink like the outsides and insides of plums, dragging my brush along every
cloud’s bruising underbelly as daylight dissolves into gauzy evening

sun. I wonder how Abby can be in Ireland and draw
everything but the clouds.
She seems to draw every
cow she lays eyes on, paints
self-portraits after De Kooning and green evening
shadows along far-away rivers,

but never clouds.
She’s stopped texting me every
night. Or maybe I’ve stopped texting her? Difficult when she’s busy painting
in Ireland, where evening
for me is midnight for her, and she keeps such a good sleep schedule, like a river
and its tides drawing

in, drawing out every
night, Dublin out of rhythm with New York. Shouldn’t a painter
keep odd hours? Ready to create whenever struck with inspiration, evening
or morning, noon or night? Shouldn’t creativity be a river
that cannot be dammed? A sun against which the shades cannot be drawn?
A window which the breath of sleep only clouds?

But then again what do I know about being a painter?
What do I know about green evening
shadows along rivers,
about Ireland and plums and the drawings
of De Kooning? What do I know about clouds?
All I know is that every

evening
I walk down to the river
to let the last drops of day pass me by, and I think about Abby drawing
in her wooden room in Ireland, a fingernail moon behind a cloud,
the charcoal on her wrists and forearms threatening to cover everything
as she blends the shadow of a face in a painting,

while here the evening sun paints the river in a thin film of rippling gold,
and every cloud blushes like the bashful subject of a drawing.

Giselle Silla (she/her) is a sophomore at Barnard College majoring in Urban Studies and minoring in German.