I’m painting into the night. Passionate about a piece I’m doing for a friend far away. She asked me for a self-portrait but I’ve turned it on its ear, slice and dicing an 8 x 10, collaging in feather for wings.
I love twelve dollars easels. Cheap and spindly, they do the job, shuddering with each stroke and job of my brush. My sparring partners, they bend and weave like willows, taking my assaults with nerve; they’ve never dropped a canvas or gone down for the count.
There are four easels, twelve spindly legs, set up tonight, each painting in a different stage of assembly: some wet, some taped, others still pinned with blue prints. The windows are open. The room smells like pine trees, maple leaves, salt water and rain. The wood floor is cold beneath my feet. I started out in Levis, crew socks and a green flannel shirt, but it wasn’t long before I stripped down to black boxers and a white tank.
Around midnight, you braided my hair.
You asked to come watch me paint -- from primed canvas to art – and I found I couldn’t say “no.” Don’t think I ever would with you. You arrived without fanfare or words. Just a tired smile, your eyes set in dark circles.
I didn’t ask your prognosis. You’ve stumped Western doctors. They make up fairytales and write articles about your maladies. You are thinner.
I paint. You watch me as much as you watch my canvases. It reminds me of when we use to box. You unnerved me, your denim eyes, after-thought of a smile. Like you had a secret. Like you knew something about mortality that the rest of us had forgotten. I had such a crush on you.
Still do.
The wood floor is cold beneath my bare knees as I kneel down to add detail to rendered feathers. The rain is pounding on the sky lights, gusting in the windows. I groan and you laugh as the wind tumbles wet brushes off a stool, dabs of gray. blue, white, black, repeating across the floor.
You stand up from the window seat, the only closed window, and you take my hand. We’re almost of an age but your skin feels like rice paper, delicate and impossibly soft. You lead me outside onto the deck.
It is pitch black except for the rain drops reflecting, flashes of gold, the lights from inside. You raise your face to the rain and my heart rises to my throat.
You blink and smile. Paint is splattered across my face, arms and chest. You rub at a smudge of green on my shoulder, a close encounter with a tipping palette. “You’re so rough,” you half tease me.
I’m shaking my head “no” so hard that my untied braid is unweaving. “Not rough,” I insist. “Just bold.”
But I don’t kiss you.
In that perfect moment. In that heartbeat between rain drops and wind. I could have. But I didn’t.
But I should have.
E.J.
