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then,
    looking up as if from dark earth.
    Â 
Distant, his body white and luminous,
    my father stood in the doorway.
Looking up as if from dark earth,
    I saw him outlined in a scrim of light.
    Â 
My father stood in the doorway
    as if to watch over me as I dreamed.
When I saw him outlined—a scrim of light—
    he was already waning, turning to go.
    Â 
Once, he watched over me as I dreamed.
    How small I was. Back then,
he was already turning to go, waning
    like the moon that night—my father.

IV

Thrall
Juan de Pareja, 1670
    Â 
    He was not my father
though    he might have been
    I came to him
the mulatto son
            of a slave woman
    just that
as if    it took only my mother
    to make me
            a
mulatto
meaning
            any white man
could be my father

In his shop    bound
    to the muller
I ground his colors
    my hands dusted    black
with fired bone    stained
    blue    and flecked
with glass    my nails
edged vermilion    as if
    my fingertips bled
In this way    just as
    I’d turned the pages
of his books
    I meant to touch
            everything he did

With Velázquez    in Rome
    a divination
At market    I lingered to touch
    the bright hulls of lemons
            closed my eyes until
    the scent was oil
and thinner    yellow ocher
    in my head
            And once
the sudden taste of iron
            a glimpse of red
    like a wound opening
            the robes of the pope
at portrait
    that bright shade of blood
            before it darkens
purpling nearly to black

Because he said
    painting was not
    
labor
    was
the province of free men
    I could only
watch    Such beauty
    in the work of his hands
            his quick strokes
    a divine language I learned
over his shoulder
            my own hands
tracing the air
    in his wake    Forbidden
            to answer in paint
I kept my canvases secret
            hidden until
    Velázquez decreed
            unto me
    myself    Free
I was apprentice    he
            my master still

How intently at times
    could he fix his keen eye
            upon me
though only once
    did he fix me    in paint
my color a study
    my eyes wide
            as I faced him
a lace collar at my shoulders
    as though I’d been born
            
noble
    the yoke of my birth
gone from my neck
    In his hand    a long brush
            to keep him far
    from the canvas
far from it    as I was
    the distance between us
            doubled    that
he