𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐞, 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐢 𝐚𝐦 𝐫𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧   —

a painter lays down the shade of a model-boy’s cheek on a canvas and the apprentice, watching, thinks on how his master is wrong. it is far more rose, in truth. no pigment could truly convey it he thinks as he cleans paintbrushes in cold water. the boy, whom the apprentice has draped in satin and seated against a myriad of red poppies looks at him, and smiles (only with his slanted grey-and-green eyes) and the water spills all over the apprentice’s clothes. the boy, with smiles brimming in his chest, almost kisses a petal of bright-crimson and oh, what the apprentice would give to be a flower now. they put a rosary on him, draped it around a slender neck once and twice. ivory looks dirty and yellowed upon such perfect marble skin. michelangelo could carve no finer throat (david would not bruise if kissed there) nor could sketch any finer line than the pale lashes fluttering down upon the boy’s rounded cheek. his expression — eyes half closed now like in the moment between sleep and holy ecstasy called from dreaming by the voice of God; the skin beneath his eyes pale blue as if suffering divine suffocation or a half-death as angels tear his lungs apart — he saw the boy coughing earlier. the apprentice watches, and thinks again that his master is wrong grey is far too drab a colour. ultramarine is what he would use — in the madonna’s robes the boy would look beyond sanctity that, he thinks, would call upon heaven, and the lord would see the boy painted and grace would be granted him (it is agony to think that one day the boy will not be here; it is even further agony to know that the boy will not be his.)