Ciaran Pierce

Ciaran Pierce is an undergraduate studying comparative world literature at California State University, Long Beach. He plans to pursue his MFA in creative writing. His work has appeared in Runestone, Sky Island Journal, Ponder Review, and Fever Dream Zine. Instagram @ciaranpierce.​

Color Theory

The shell that you are

and are soon to be—

I’ll waste nothing of it

Give me your purpled toes and mottled skin,

your tufts of hair and soiled hospital gowns,

give me ID cards and pills in copper bottles,

your name, your leftovers, a slack jaw, the last

place your mother kissed you, your grime, a junk

drawer, a bible I won’t ever read, the scar where,

at age four, the dog’s incisors grazed tenderness

I’ll make something of them

Like when Monet sat beside his dying wife

and studied the hues of her skin for hours,

a barren canvas in each pupil

             purples, yellows, whites—

what to do with them, where to plant them

Yes, he said, as if repainting

the world from scratch

I’ll use this arm for the shape

of windblown trees

and this collapsed tooth

for cave entrances

and this fingerprint

to design the maze

from which no living thing

will escape

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