she draws herself at night

  

when she comes to the edges of the paper

she sets it up against the dresser and looks at it
she rubs her hands on her thighs

leaves streaks and smudges of the colors
that she is

but she is gone

she is the impression of who she is tonight

the woman in the picture is another woman
just like her

another woman that she might tell someone is herself
if she felt like it

another woman she might say she has never met
if she doesn't

it is a woman holding herself in her arms
rocking herself back and forth

she is sitting on a cloud

and she can't tell if this cloud

that she is holding and rocking herself on
is in the sky

or in the empty blue space between her hands
and that is why she is holding herself

that is why she is rocking back and forth

who is that she thinks

in that other place on a cloud
who is that and then she is back

she is back with her hands wiping themselves clean
on her thighs

and her legs are covered with streaks
of the different colors that she is
yellows pushed into blues reds forced
into greens whites with blacks

the colors blended over and over again

until it all becomes the same sort of lumpy grey
not dark not light but somewhere among

the shades of grey she finds

between when she falls asleep and the lightness
where she wakes up

somewhere between here and there
in a room filled with smoke

that stings her eyes and fills her hair
and she thinks that she is on fire

thinking to herself about how if she could find the door
she would run outside

and a cloud would be waiting for her there
a cloud filled with rain

waiting to put out the flames

she feels burning all over her body.