The art table

I am stencilled into skin, scissors grazing along the cookie-cutter metal.
I made paper promises to My Girl across the art table, holding hands under.
But the paper might burn and the scissors might slip.

We can't lie at the art table, though, because art is everything that's left.
We're a movie, a sad story written on fading pages. In cryptic poetry, leading up to the last paragraph.
But if it fades too quick, no one will read the words we so desperately want to say.

The cold metal is shaped in an angel, supposed to be our saving grace. Looking out for us, but the sharp edges bite into our skin. Red paint pours out in lines and circles across our knuckles and thighs.
We'll use that to paint a pretty picture, and hold it up for the world to see.
We'll be Real Artists, slaving over the art table, all day long, with our paints at hand.
"I'm trying to get the blue paint out," we'll say, not knowing that the soupy air around us is what's really turning our paint to a bloody red.
With this colour, all we can paint is war scenes. Battles and death, you know.
It's not our choice.


At the art table, we pass secret notes underneath, holding them in our warm vs. cold hands; together.
The words, images or thoughts encompassed on the paper do not matter.
Really, it's just the fact that we understand.
I know what you mean when you draw a silly crab in red.
It means something's pinching your head between it's fingers, ready to squeeze tight.
But no matter how hard you hold coal, it doesn't change to diamond from it's black ash.