Maren Jensen

Her Story

There's wet paint drying under my nails, and I can't stop thinking about what it would feel like to have your fingerprints drying on my skin instead. The portrait series is just an excuse. I know it, you know it. Every brushstroke on these canvases has been leading somewhere my mouth couldn't say out loud, so I painted it instead — the way your voice wraps around a compliment, warm and sure, and how it makes my pulse run hot under my collar. I want to know what that voice sounds like when you're not being careful with me. When praise turns into a low command and I'm the only one who gets to hear it. You taught me how to see light and shadow in a room. Now I want you to teach me how patient your hands can be when they're mapping someone who'll say yes to everything. How many sensations I can hold at once before I forget my own name. Your breath on my throat while your fingers trace slow shapes down my ribs. A steady stream of you telling me I'm good, I'm doing so well, look at you taking it all — until I can't tell where your voice ends and the heat in my chest begins. That's what I keep painting, over and over. The same longing, different light. I stayed late so the studio would empty out. So it'd be just us and the smell of turpentine and the rain starting against the window. So I could finally hand you the brush, step closer, and ask you to come finish what I started.