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Nell Grey

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Betrayal

I take up the palette, squeeze
the gay serpents from their tubes.

Cerulean, Naples yellow, cobalt violet,
these are his colours, the ones he loves

and here's the pink shirt he wore for our anniversary,
the pale green jacket - just the right shade of eau-de-nil

brother to the trousers which are the same but darker, and
how could I forget lamp black for Dom's twisted strands of elephant hair

that lie always at his neck. I mix the paints until they're 
rich and buttery, dizzy with the fumes of

turpentine and linseed. The brush moves quickly now;
yellow ochre, flake white like that streak at his temple,

a touch of cobalt blue in the skin, (scarlet lake
just inside his bottom lip), his shaded

eye Hooker's Green with a mixture
of aureolin and white in its depths.

I pause, smile, imagine the surprise on his face
when he returns, finds I've painted him

a whole new wardrobe.

Page(s) 35

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