Ralph Pullins

You painted my hands with violence, painted them to be bludgeons, crude and scarred. You painted my heart the color of despair, the sickly yellow of self loathing. I was untouched at first, Tabula Rasa, waiting for the artist's hands to tell me who I was, to tell me what I will be, but I didn't get an artist, I didn't get a saint. You showed me who I was, who I would be.  You did this, and then you handed me the brush and told me to keep painting.  My hands are not an artist's hands, they are thick and blunt, the hands of a fighter, of a brute, of a monster, I took the brush and slopped paint over everything you showed me, layer over layer, tried to cover the worst, hide it from view, and sometimes I could convince myself that it wasn't there at all, but in vino veritas , and some things cannot be hidden, some stains cannot be washed away. You painted my hands with violence, black and red with rage, you painted my face into a leering jack o lantern and now what can