The overachievers start in. They think if they don’t make their crazy peeping calls that the sun won’t ever rise and all the world will be lost to darkness. Crazy little half-pint chickadees. Don’t they know they aren’t supposed to sing until after the sky turns? Don’t they know... omgosh! What time is it?
A radio is on somewhere. Shawn Colvin is singing:
It's a crazy world
On the head of a pin
You only need to look so far
As the smile on my face
To see the shape I'm in
I’m stripped down to my white tank which hasn’t been white in four hours, my blue jeans rolled around my ankles. A couple of toe rings catch the light... right next to fat, still-glistening tear drops of green and blue paint. My hair is down and wild, my eyes are bright, there’s white acrylic on my cheek and a black/forest mix smeared across my forearm. At some point I leaned into my palette leaving an interesting, if somewhat R-rated, impression across the custom colors. This tank top will never be white again.
Where is my alarm clock?
You don't look for love
It's gonna look for you
Well you found me, honey
And you sound so good
I learn something new about this body of mine every day. God didn’t want me to get bored, I suppose, so He hid all these Easter eggs in my eternal binary that reveal themselves with unknown triggers. Like: eating chocolate cake with raspberry swirl makes me want to buy silk sheets. Putting on my own perfume makes me think of someone else. And hearing birds outside my window makes me think I’m going to be late for a 5:15 call.
It also appears that when someone says “it was a promise” at 01:12:23 this triggers rampant blushing, exquisite muscle tension through my shoulders, lower back and thighs and a burning desire to touch brush to canvas. Intensely. For four hours.
I stepped to the easel, your voice still in my ears, replaying phrases and benedictions like Terrapyre Prayers. My brown gaze was locked on the painting even while I started to peel open the caddy and reach, blinding, for brushes, choosing by feel. I paint in layers and you have so many of them, don’t you, baby? There’s that blue spring sky – ‘cause only spring sky gets that blue – and the bare green-brown of slender branches, flexible, pliable fingers, with their nestled gems of opening buds, the pinks and whites of new life, new love, and soft petals. Sky first. Then branches. Then buds. The sheaths that hold them, splitting open like my heart. This is from the last three days. Now the time for more layers has arrived.
Before I start to apply new, wet paint, liquid color and texture and depth, I run my fingers along the tree branches and then off them. I trace what comes next, from mind’s eye to cloth. I haven’t gotten that final picture I need but I know your colors by heart, the shape of your face, the curve of your cheek, the fall of your hair. My fingertips find the picture first and then paint follows.
You're the object
Of my affection
Not a dream
Or make believe
You're the object
Of my affection
Not a phantom fantasy
Some time passes, I don’t know how long, but at some point I stop using brushes and start to blend finer tones with my smallest finger tip, tracing lines that I see as clearly in my mind as I’ll ever see in a photograph. But another trigger takes me. Something you said a week or two ago. Something you probably don’t even remember and I pause, my breath like a runner’s, deep and slow.
Sweet thoughts carry me to a local hotspot – no, not a club, a tea house with wifi – where the air always smells like chai and the room is dark wood and brown leather wingbacks. I’m standing by a bookshelf of antique books, but I look up when you walk in. I know you instantly. Even with my eyes closed, I know you.
You smile softly. You always smile softly. You aren’t prone to showy expressions. You stand for a moment and survey your surroundings. The sunlight, California springtime sunlight, slants through the stain glass Bird of Paradise hanging in the window and casts colors across your skin and jacket. The barista asks if she can get you something. She’s being reverent, of course. With your laptop tucked under your arm, you look like a writer.
You order chai. Decaf. With honey and coconut.
I have forgotten where I am.
You sit down at a small round table with only one chair. The cast-colors of the stain glass fall across the surface, an exotic flower creating a tablecloth of light. You look around again, as if seeing how things change from this new vantage.
My heart is pounding in my chest and I realize that breathing is optional.
You open your laptop. I see the orange and black, then blue and black screens of a familiar location. I hear you typing carefully. Send.
In the back pocket of my jeans, my FlipStart pings. You’ve got mail.
Hobbyist F. Brian Smith writes:
The Bird of Paradise flower is a spectacular blossom. Long stemmed flowers emerge from green boat-shaped bracts which are bordered in deep red or purple. The numerous pointed petals of brilliant orange are contrasted with an arrow-shaped tongue of vivid blue. If started from seed, Bird of Paradise takes three to seven years to first blossom. Pollinated primarily by sunbirds, the strelitzia nicolai can reach heights of ten meters tall and are world renown for the spectacular shape of their flowers.
At some point, I continued to paint. Remembering my professor’s words from years ago: “Keep you eyes on the model, E.J. Not on the canvas. You’re not painting the canvas, girl! You’re painting the woman!” I continued to paint but my gaze stayed on you in that tea house. Just following orders. Just being a good student.
At some point, I forget to set my alarm.
At some point, birds start to sing.
At this point... I am very late for work.
You're the object
Of my affection
Not a rescue remedy
You're the object
Of my affection
Come to me
