Withdrawing Clara McShane

Withdrawing

On glummer Tuesday evenings I sketch you, mottled pages of my marbled trinket notebook filling in the hazy contours of your face. Sometimes, my crude pencilling widens the gulf between your eyes and nose, (it’s like that, with drawing) and I force a brilliant laugh, or two, painting the pretence of a purposeful impressionist. I draw your hands behind your back, at times, or not at all. Drawn hands look sausage-like, to me, cartoonish and scrawly, and simplistic, given that you are real, now to something. Six weeks ago, you removed me from your virtual darkroom of developments of living sketches glowing in screaming red. I sketch you, still, erasing the tiny twisted lines that jolt from my wicked pencil, summoning your homely eyes, digging pensive holes into the brittle paper, alternating my hands with yours. On Wednesdays, I pass the grimy orange bus-stop and count inanimately collecting, with each step, a store of solid sketches, sleeping trees, cars, things without hands, to draw closely behind you.

Clara McShane