Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

He’s gone. She can’t believe it, can’t go on.
She’s going to give up painting. So she paints
Her final canvas, total-turn-off
Black. One long
Obsidian goodbye.
A charcoal-burner’s Smirnoff,
The mirror of Loch Ness
Reflecting the monster back to its own eye.

But something’s wrong. Those mad
Black-body particles don’t sing
Her story of despair, the steel and
Garnet spindle
Of the storm.
This black has everything its own sweet way.
Where’s the I’d-like-to-kill-
You conflict? Try once more, but this time add

A curve to all that straight. And opposition –
White. She paints black first. A grindstone belly
Hammering a smaller shape
Beneath a snake
Of in-betweening light.
“I feel like this. I hope that you do, too.
Black crater. Screw you. Kiss.”
And sees a voodoo flicker, where two worlds nearly touch

And miss. That flash, where white
Lets black get close, that dagger of not-quite contact,
Catspaw panic, quiver on the wheat
Field before thunder –
There. That’s it.
That’s her own self, in paint,
Splitting what she was from what she is.
As if everything that separates, unites.