LAURA AMY
AMY
There’s a question in her voice: an upturn,
a lilt, a lift at the ends of her sentences.
She looks at me
like she looks at the Rothko,
gaze wide and transparent, as if
I am as old as the paintings, as if
she needs me to say ‘yes,
that’s good, that’s right, that’s clever.’
She is probably around fifteen;
I can’t remember now what colour
her eyes are, or the exact placement
of the freckles that pepper the bridge of her nose.
She could be unremarkable, except
I have asked her to come and sit
with me in a dimly lit room in the Tate Modern,
and promised to make her into a poem.
She tells me she is studying GCSE art,
she works in ‘mixed media’ (I don’t really
know what that is, but I nod and smile), and,
when I’m quiet, when I really listen,
she tells me that for her
the fading edges of Rothko’s squares
transform themselves into clouds
with the sun behind them.
by Laura Attridge and Amy Russell
at the Tate Modern, February 2017