Scraping at the palette with my fingernail,
I amass a little pile of pigment
And then try to mix it with spit
To make something resembling paint,

But even with twenty two kisses of saliva
And thorough stirring,
The mixture is thick and grainy,
And turns my gentle sunrise into
Something my hand didn’t wish for. 

A stink bug smashed against stained glass.

Alison Brown is a first-year at Yale University. She is a prospective History major and interns at The Yale Review. Her work has appeared in La Piccioletta Barca and Typishly and she received the Lara J. Coolidge poetry prize from Groton School (2019).