Featured Poet Nanette Guadiano-Campos

     
        Back

 Watercolors

When I was a little girl you painted pictures

Of things you loved

And so I loved them

You drew things on the wall

A life-size forest full of trees

And birds and every kind of flower

And so I created worlds

Which never really existed

Became people I never really could be

Except in my world of make-believe

Where the only bad things

Were the lobos and dragons

Of my dreams

I’m not a little girl anymore

But you’re still painting pictures

Of things that you love

Drawing on the walls

Life-size forests full of trees

And birds and every kind of flower

And still I love it

Though the world which now exists

Is not of my choosing

And who I am is not what I ever dreamed I would be

In my world of make-believe

Where the only bad things

Were the lobos and dragons

Of my dreams

Disillusion tints the wall

A shade or two more gray

But I am still in love with your worlds

Because you made them

And though I cannot truly say

That I believe them anymore

(Knowing full well the things reality can produce)

I will close my eyes and try to remember

What it was to have faith

Because you do.

 Fade

I painted her picture with my eyes closed

A Caravaggio of memory

Down to the last wrinkle

time had etched into her bittersweet face

How easy it was to make her mine again!

Vibrant hues of orange, yellow and red I painted

with each stroke of recollection

love in every line I used to memorize with my fingers

as a child

What will I do with only memories

frescoed onto the ceiling of my heart

like an Italian masterpiece

bleached by the light of the sun

little by little

until nothing is left—nothing at all

but the fade