DREAM WITHER
“dream wither”, 175 x 105 cm, oil on canvas, 2022Dream Wither
By Harper Walton
gills are just wounds that will never become scars
sage is just green that will never become a forest
grey is just night that has not yet fallen
the same hose pipe that revives flowers can strangle you
I know because I’ve been the throat
and the pipe
and the flowers
I’ve been dripping
and the floor I dripped onto
I’ve been spare paint, diamond hard
crosshatched, lopsided, heart-shaped
a semi-lisp, a quaver, an unsketched batwing
I am or have been
a spring loaded something
an unconsensual dandelion
a colour so disgusting they could use me for tobacco pouches
the opposite of a lone wolf born into a family of lone wolves
a panic attack in the form of a bowl of spaghetti
a focus that only exists because you’re not allowed to look away
an arrow pointing to a world without arrows
I’ve scrutinised the world so meticulously
that I have nothing left to discover
except the insides of my eyelids
but when I close them I still see you there
a single splash of sky blue
like a lake in a country
landlocked by invisible borders
I remember sabre-toothed anglerfish
and telegraph pole ladder horseshoes
stapled onto wolf-black smoke
and a reaching that disgusts
as all reaching must
and blood stains if we lived in a world
where we bled pink blood
I remember blood with nothing to hide
iron wool licking rust off blunt barbed wire
stitches on a scar from a never-wound
I saw a new colour birthed
between the legs of pink and grey
the only difference between I was and I saw
is in the ordering
I was an unstretched canvas before
the silent screech of your almost-mouth
peeled out of the mass of me
and I was transfigured into a train track centipede
spiralling within itself
a body on the line
a werewolf living in a world with no full moon
forever waning
wolf black is the darkest you get
the darkest I will let you have
the only break from the chaos of colour
and the colour of chaos
will be the breaking through of unpainted canvas
the breaking of your mind
just a brain without a soul
a body without a home
a wolf without a bone
just a fur suit full of fluid
pink blood that will never become red
words by Harper Walton
@harperwalton_