The Paint Factory Years

Author: Julia Klatt Singer

Publisher: betweenthehighwaypress (2025)

“The Paint Factory Years”

      We mapped out our world
      in the empty lot,
      scratched our love
      into the pebbled dirt.
      When the rain came
      let it river, let it glisten
      on our skin.

      We measured the hours
      in the drifting of clouds,
      in the three-note song
      of a bird.
      Seven ways I said
      I loved you. Seven more
      I kept to myself.

Not the blue, but the longing begins Singer’s collection—this phrase later finds its foothold in the poem “Berlin Blue.” All the same, not the paint, but the skin. Running along the Miami River in southern Ohio, I read in bold pink, graffitied letters PAIN IS PAINT.  I built my endurance. We build our endurance with art, but art is not only a demonstration of our sufferings or pleasures. Across these years, smattered like dried paint, we outlast suffering and carry on with “the same ache in me that you have in you.“