Considering Myself

Self goes through me, studiously
        and I am character, unassailable age, and local colour.
            I am an interesting fact.
               Obliquely, I offset my backgrounds.

I assert my right to belong inside a frame
        while blaming it for its narrow considerations
                such as an expectation of beauty.

        I will not stray into pseudonym.
Nor are wallflowers necessarily coy.
        All flowers are walls, and faces flowers too,
                and selves will not be surmounted.

A brim of shadow is a partial veil,
        and what’s not covered counters my discretions,
            a red to temper vanity.

       (I give nothing freely, which is not
that I give nothing).

My mother said only childless women
paint themselves.

I make no claims to propagation
here: this is an endpoint,
or a threshold.
This is only a picture,
steeped in hues
which will compost readily.
It is texture:
a dissonance of complementary colours.