Digital publication | Page 96

I close my eyes.  

Wait until dusk turns to dawn, 

Count the cries until they melt into song  

Clear and reverberant as the dove that warbles a melody 

Stifled by the branches’ stinging clutches  

I watch as the feathers fall.  

 

  

pen·ti·men·to 

/ˌpen(t)əˈmen(t)ō/ 

Noun  

a visible trace of earlier painting beneath a layer or layers of paint on a canvas. 

pentimento.

{Leah K.}

89

I make out fire burning  

Beyond my shut eyes 

Sense waves as they roll and swell 

Beneath my ungrounded stance 

Feel hands cold and stiff  

From the depths of a middle passage ship 

I desperately reach to grasp what I perceive  

What only surfaces centuries later, gazes after  

The first glance at pastels 

painting nobility in navy blue coats and golden curls 

But all that remains  

Of the hands outstretched from darkness, the voices screaming until hoarse with fatigue 

Is a shadow 

scrawled in the canvas like an afterthought. 

 

I open my eyes, 

I pinch myself but the only thing that stings