don't touch

i promise i won't do it but
i want to put my hand on the van gogh.
up close, there's a painting where i can see
a single brush hair lodged in the paint.
texture has surely morphed over 
the years but there has to be something
of the first strokes on the surface.
i luckily do not believe in genius but i do 
believe in divine conversations.
some art you look at & you can tell
ghosts are talking & the future is talking
both at the same time all over the bend
of a line. when i make something i ask myself,
"would a spirit visit this color for 
a brush with the past?" in the museum
all the walls say, "don't touch." there is 
a chair from the 1700s with a rope across
the front. a little sign reads, "please don't
sit on me." all preservation is about loss.
a shrinking thing. once, handled. kissed 
& sat on. now watched from farther
& farther distances while it shrinks 
to the size of a thumb. as a child in the museum of 
modern art i touched the corner of a painting.
i don't remember the artist but
i remember the color red. i like to imagine
it was a rothko. whoever made it though, there was 
enough blood & firetruck to last a lifetime. instantly
alarms sounded. the footfall of guards.
i was four or five. they towered above me.
i do not know what they said 
or what they told my parents. i see us
standing outside the big building while the rest
of my preschool continued like good disciples. 
leaves were starting to fall or maybe 
those were petals. i don't think my parents 
scolded me or if they did i don't remember.
that painting i touched sometimes emerges
on the wall of my bedroom in the early morning.
it is huge. maybe even bigger than it was
in the museum. one day it will be bigger
than my house. i am not advocating for touching
fine art. i am just saying i think it was glorious.
the brush. the color. all of it for a moment 
just a breath away from my skin. the artist pausing
to consider whether or not she should
leave the hair in the brush stroke. then, forgetting,
the hair, like a tilde, left inside.