There was too much white. If it could speak it would have spat curses at her, vile, vulgar words taking shape in the air, smacking against her face. She knew those words. The burnt bitter taste of them in her mouth as she stared at the white space seemed to expand to surround her. She let a sigh leave her lips and could hear the chortle the canvas would make if it could. She wasn’t the woman who belonged in this room.
Get out of the house, they said. Do something. Make something. Be something. They knew, they understood. But it was time, they said. We’re just trying to help, just looking out for you, just trying to help you move on, carry on, get through it, over it, past it.
She didn’t want to. If she couldn’t go back, which she really would have preferred, then she would stand still and submerge herself in his absence. If she couldn’t have him, she would have the loss of him.
This was, she knew, what art was for, to guide us out of our grief. If she were a brilliant artist she would have something to say right now. She would find purpose in the wreckage. Her hands would move. Her mind would make something up and there it would be in all its many colors. She couldn’t see colors anymore, only shade after shade of grey, darkening to black. She had words for what she could not see. Indigo, lilac, cerulean, saffron. She had a favorite color once.
It gets better. It gets better. It gets better. A Greek chorus followed her around and sang her to sleep. Reminding her to eat. Leaving casseroles in the freezer. Better didn’t mean anything to her anymore. Someone knocked on the door and stepped inside. She knew to follow them. She knew that when the car stopped in front of a house that it was her house. Her room was all the darker shades of grey, comforting, like a stopped clock.
Morning came again. That was something she noticed now, how the days kept rolling into each other like waves. She could feel time rocking her back and forth, pulling her forward but never letting her slip beneath the suffocating weight of wine dark water. The ancient Greeks must have been surprised when the sea did not stain their skin. She remembered reading somewhere that they didn’t have a word for the color blue. Maybe she had gotten her wish, had gone backwards, but back too far. Back to when men had eyes like dogs and nobody knew what color was. Shower. Dry off. Get dressed. Eat. You have to eat something. Swallow what she can.
She tries to think of something they would like to see. A sailboat. A bowl of fruit. A flower arrangement. An animal; something friendly, not wild. For a moment, she thinks she sees the color green up close to her face.
It must be hours that she sits there. She knows only that she comes and goes and time must still be passing. She would ask someone but she’s sure she is supposed to know. She has come to know what the wrong answers are by the looks exchanged, the smiles forced, the words that, were they any softer, she would lie on them and sleep a perfect sleep. She likes the darkness of her bedroom, and has grown accustomed to the grey and white studio where she sits alone each day. She remembers the word for alone. It is different than lonely. She remembers that one too. Solitary. Solitaire. It is a game. It is a gem. It is a flightless bird that doesn’t live here anymore.
Morning comes again. She is not surprised. There is a man lying beside her, asleep. This is right. She has woken up next to him before. He belongs there. She belongs there too. There is a name for this, for two people belonging in the same bed. It is hitting against the roof of her mouth, bouncing off the back of her teeth. Her lips part but the word swallows itself back down. She washes her hair. She puts on jeans. She wears a blouse and eats an egg sandwich with her hands. She puts her plate in the sink, remembering the word sink. Kitchen sink. To sink. Sinking. Sank. Sunk. Sunken ship. Buried treasure.
The canvas is as white as a scream. She looks for shapes hiding under the white blanket of canvas. A creature morphs and moves, changing before she can call out its name. There is a not unpleasant turning in her stomach. A familiar pull. She wants to catch the creature in the canvas. She works to snare the thing with strokes of paint and negative space. It is not unlike hunger, not unlike desire. The word comes back to her with a flush. She is not ready for desire yet but she can remember it.
The creature she has captured is beautiful in a way that hurts, a way that breaks open a thick shell lodged up under her ribs. The cracks in the shell allow the soft, gooey thing inside to expand. It expands and contracts. Expands and contracts. She stares at what she has trapped in the canvas and there is something there she did not expect to see. It is small, almost unnoticeable, crying out for a name. Water wells up in one eye, spills over, rolls down, drips off her face and onto the floor. She is overwhelmed by the ecstatic remembrance of blue.
Michelle Orabona is a writer, and writing teacher, currently living in the Greater Hartford, CT area. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Pinch, and others. Follow @nerdpimp on Instagram if you enjoy haikus and random photos of stars and ice cream.
Photo by Internet Archive Book Images on Foter.com