2023 School Magazine

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN Zoe Stannard (8H)

Pain and heartbreak make a piece, all the best ones do. The tears stain the paper, making for a sorrow outline. The colours trace the shadow, making for beautiful pain through and through. The finger dances on the canvas, blood carving out an image, looking so divine. A girl sits by a windowsill, her tears make of oil and ink. These chronicles of colour you make, fuels my earthly desires For I wander alone on this barren stage. Enraged and full of doubt, my mind sets fires. Anything is your canvas, as you decorate my cage. You meet me in my prison, giving colour to doubt. So take this love poem my fair maiden, As fair skinned as paper, and as flexible as parchment. As fragile as a page and as inventive as papyrus. Although blank, you fill my world with colour, as my tears fuel you watercolour. For culture betrays us, as desire is a vulture. At last the pen has broken, but the ink seeps through the floorboards.

It would swirl across the page, in beautiful chronicles of ink. It was a beautiful, pure expression of raw, unkempt emotion. My eyes would trace the loops and curls, as the world around me would shrink, And the pen with its ruthless jabs of art with its quick motion, To notion all those that have come before now. I envy your power of sight and mind, For me, when I put said heart on page I feel blind. For you have eyes everywhere, which see the good in me. Which see the heart through the rib cage, longing to be free. To see the world through your eyes, the inspiration and awe. Just because love is told through chocolates and roses, Doesn’t mean that the love does not stain this page. This parchment drips with sorry work, with a signature this mistake closes. But to me, charm is a gift, given through rage. For the gage of such an artefact is given through such spite.

Elise Ridoutt (12E)

Charlotte Lin (7O)

122 | BRISBANE GIRLS GRAMMAR SCHOOL 2023