It’s midnight.
Only the moon is up.
And us.
Screaming at each other, with hurt that tastes like venom masked as paint
Throwing it across the walls in violent splashes of colour

A splash of blood red
You say I’ve changed

A splash of deep bruised purple
I say you dented and damaged me and then blamed me for looking for bumpy

A splash of despairing grey
You say you’re being calm

A splash of empty navy
I say just because you aren’t yelling doesn’t mean your coldness is kindness

A splash more
You say your toes are sore from all the tiptoeing you do around me

A splash more
I say that mine look like a ballerina in a career of point shoes

A splash more
You say to keep it down.
The neighbours must hate us.
Our signatures at the bottom corner of this awful piece of art.

What aren’t we saying when we think, here in the darkness, we are saying it all…

I am not saying my truth
A splash of baby, unfiltered pink
“Please love me more and kiss the parts that hurt”

You are not saying your truth
A splash of sandy yellow to match our sunkissed hair
“My darling girl, why won’t you let me. I can’t bear the thought that I did this to you”

Somehow our tired souls end up back here, staring at the ceiling.
But

We are holding hands.
Holding on to each other’s bloody, paint splattered bodies.
And we promise one another to be better
We promise that our tracks don’t stop here, this train isn’t pulling into the station yet
Because we can paint the walls with all our magic thoughts too

You say I am the most beautiful woman your lips have ever touched and blood red becomes the flame of a flamingo dancer’s dress

I say every night when you get into bed my heart still races and the cold blue turns the turquoise of the ocean.

You say there is no other woman you have thought you could be with since we met and the sad grey turns piercing white

I say that I couldn’t stop loving you even if I wanted to and the blotched magenta turns to the purple of Royals

And every time I roll over and place my head on your chest, you squeeze my hand, kiss my forehead
And I know that passion can look just like Monet’s gardens and lilies – or it can look like a crime scene

Just as a sunset can look like an explosion

We both only have the desire to hang in the Louvre
We both want to see the colours as the sun goes down.