• By Quinn MacMillan (she/her)
  • Art “The Kiss” by Quinn and Erin MacMillian (she/her)

Tucked into the wedge-shaped
corner of the cluttered room,
The Kiss hangs and collects shadow

Its gilding glints underneath gray film as one
shifts in and out to do taxes. It is unused to
being looked at now, an opaque
blot of clouded brass removed from love and
wondering if love’s
shape is still there.

Fragmented in ornament,
The Kiss complements the clutter room:
shape beside shape and line beside
line. Vacancy beside vacancy.
Love: a gap among gaps.

The cracked bay window beside the desk
filters in pastoral and green-tinted light.
It just misses the framed of gold
on the wall, abandoning it to gloom
and shading its sentiment.

The flowers tangled beside the lady’s
kissed cheek are of the same shades as
those in my grandmother’s garden,

a portrait of love.

Grandfather kneels in the flowering
grass, taking great care, to hold his world
and knowingly keep her there.
She becomes the model of affection
with her warm auburn hair and
insists that:

Love is earned, and a
delicate thing.

A model never
earnestly
followed,

A model
posed to
parents
no longer
in love.