how to paint love
by crystal tiara

no cheap candles,
no flowers, no chocolates,
just a chameleon perched
on a rock, its colors
sometimes bright and sometimes dark,
watching a blind man
picking a thinly-disguised dagger
and, thinking it to be a boomerang,
throwing it in the air.
it won’t return, of course,
but the thought of losing it
will come back to hurt him,
stabbing him worse than any dagger can.

Author’s Notes: Dark and a bit weird, this poem came to be as a result of an activity from the creative writing book that I’m reading. The prompt is, “how I would paint (something abstract, like an emotion)”.