Still Life With Pear
You are painting a picture. Someone might ask of what, and you would lie. You would tell a lie and say, a still life, a still life with pear and vase. But really, you are painting the aftermath. Your canvas is stretched over a memory made vivid. You remember with every window view and mirror reflection, even opening a closet door, seeing the clothes you didn’t wear that day. You sketch the one room house, the filmy smoke that rose to the ceiling, smoke that became fog, turning the air hazy grey. He knew how to use smoke and fog and haze, to obscure, disguise, capture. He fed his purpose to you. Your head was not yours; you could see and not see. What you saw was him warming his bare feet in you. This is the ugliness that is in your pocket, disgust amid coins. You penciled in the secret, erased it, drew it again. You caulked the crack in the plaster of what he did to you. The painting is you at 15, not the lie, not the overripe pear and the empty vase. The pear on the table softens, begins to spoil. Fruit flies stir the air above it. You spread the blanket of your painting over the rotting pear. You try to cover it, but still it shows through. Like a fish under pond ice, the shadow swims beneath the paint. You layer on thick slabs of color but there it is, just below the surface, the persistent image, the ghost pear, the still life.