Kyla Guimaraes

Portrait of Vincenzo Peruggia Stealing the Mona Lisa

On Aug. 21, 1911, the then-little-known painting was stolen from the wall of the Louvre
in Paris [by Vincenzo Peruggia and two others]. And a legend was born.
-NPR, “The Theft That Made The 'Mona Lisa' A Masterpiece.”

You vanish like snow melting into a warming night, like an embrace
between two brothers. Your disappearance at first barely noticeable,

then suddenly chasmic. You’ll always feel like this: small but inevitably
grandiose. Childlike until suddenly adult. Smiling straightfaced

into a future without you that is effectively the same as the present,
spare for the copper doorknob that broke as you left.

Your life is framed by anonymity. The copper doorknob is turning green;
alone in its longing, like those brothers, embracing in snow that is long gone.

That is to say, there is no mercy in loving
your country more than yourself. Nowhere to run but home, where water floods

the streets with longing, with melted snow. Yet here you are, slipping away
from the night to replace the doorknob, to meet your country

at dawn with fistfuls of cash and the police close behind. The water pouring
out into emptiness, until you are nothing

but a man whose loving extends to everything but himself. Ask the brothers.
Some things aren’t beautiful until they’re gone.

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Kyla Guimaraes is a student and writer from New York City. Her work can be found in SUNHOUSE Literary, The Penn Review, HAD, Dishsoap Quarterly and elsewhere. Kyla is an alum of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio, a poetry editor at Eucalyptus Lit, and a poetry reader at Okay Donkey. In addition to writing, she likes puns and standing outside in the rain.