I was inspired by the sky Monday evening… blue, pink, and purple. In that moment I realised how my mother learned to paint. Four years after she died, every sunrise and every slow‑burn sunset feels like her newly found brush‑stroke across the horizon. This poem invites you into the space where loss becomes colour and presence becomes visible light.
“Four Years Later, She Paints”
The sky’s been a little more beautiful since she left.
Four years now,
and she still finds her way back,
not just in dreams,
but also in color.
Pink, blue, purple,
the hue of the view she painted
this evening
the kind that makes you stop mid‑sentence,
just to take another look.
Never painted a day in her life,
she paints now.
Every sunrise, every slow‑burn sunset,
she’s learned a language that allows her to share even when she’s no longer there
Somehow I know she mixes those shades
just to show she misses us too.
And sometimes,
I think it’s her way of saying
I love you,
now that her words
don’t
reach
our
ears.
Poets Notes
This poem came from noticing the sky and realising it carried messages from the one meant the most… My mother wasn’t the painter she is now, in her absence she became an artist in the sky. Seeing those colours reminded me she’s still at work… even when I can’t hear her voice. Writing this piece helped me feel her presence not as a memory trapped in time, but as light moving, transforming, still reaching out.
Even when words fail us, love remains visible. This piece is a reminder to look up, to notice colour, and to feel the presence of those we’ve lost in the world around us. Let this poem and photo stand together as proof: what’s lost isn’t gone, it’s just changed form.
