In Your Studio

I’m on your lap in a photo I no longer have— a toddler with a borrowed brush, my hand caught mid-daub on your canvas. It was staged, of course— your painting for a calendar on the easel in front of us like the month you gave me a tool of your craft and I mistook it for permission— but my brush didn’t paint like yours. Sometimes I wonder if you saw it, the difference— or if you just liked how I held the brush, intent on nothing more than becoming you. I no longer try to paint like you. I paint like me— and I think you'd smile to see what I’ve done, though my brush still doesn’t paint like yours.