Vincent and I, by Shelly Blankman

Irises, by Van Gogh (Netherlands), 1889.

Vincent and I
 
I walked down school halls
with your ghost by my side,
 
misunderstood, you and I.
Our frayed souls knitted in
 
the lyrics of our lives that
no one understood but us.
 
If they tried, they didn’t say.
We were locked in our minds,
 
our vessels of happiness, cracked
and emptied by mockery and
 
despair, our lives captured in  the
peace  of nature, you with your
 
paints, I with my pencils, where nothing
brought joy but flowers, their wind-kissed
 
petals gently dancing, no judging,
not leaving us in darkness,
 
not abandoning us in light.
I lived your life through your pain.
 
Perhaps if you’d known, you would
not have felt so alone. I outgrew
 
the sadness once shared with you.
I will always know the crystal colour
 
of your tears that others will only see as
pictures in pretty frames on museum walls.

Shelly Blankman

Shelly Blankman and her husband Jon are empty-nesters living in Columbia, Maryland with their four rescue cats and one foster dog. They have two sons, Richard, 32, living in New York, and Joshua, 31, living in Texas. Shelly has followed a career path in public relations and journalism, but her first love has always been poetry.  In addition to The Ekphrastic Review, she has been published in Verse-Virtual, Praxis Online Magazine, Silver Birch, Visual Verse, Whispers, Poetry Superhighway, and Social Justice Poetry.