Rhapsody

//06: house.

for the next week,
i sat on my wooden three-legged stool in the middle of the road
and drew the ocean's interchanging moods.

every day his red truck would come up from the west,
and he would silently swerve around me,
flattening the grass
(i grit my teeth)
before continuing on his way.

s i l e n t l y

when
           the day
                          came,
                                       i couldn't go outside.

i went to our back porch instead,
the one with the garden - that didn't face the ocean;
and i set up an easel
(that my brother had built for me)
and i took out one of the canvases
(that my father had made for me)
and my paints and brushes,
and i tried to breathe color into my sketches.

i could paint the sky:
blue-violet-pink-blue-blue-moreblue
and patches of white
cream-vanilla-ivory-snow-ice
but i couldn't paint the sea.

i painted the beach - a stripe of long yellow sand.
and the tall grasses - grey and green and grey.
and this house,
                             a door with peeling white paint
                             and walls like faded blue eyes.

 { you interrupted me }

"what's your name?"

"lairen."

"i'm lowell."

"okay."

pause.

i tried a different mix, with a greener sort of blue.

"you really don't care, do you?"

i took a deep breath for patience.

"stop talking to me. i'm trying to paint."

i matched my words with a glare.

"can i watch?"

"no."

he did anyways.

"what are you doing in my house?"

"the front door was open,
you weren't on the road,
and i was worried."

it's such                          a reasonable response that i find
                (deceivingly)
                                           i have no retort for it.

i ignore him and try to keep painting.

he sits down beside my stool,
crossing his legs and resting
his chin in his hands,
elbows on his knees.
his eyes follow my strokes intently.

his gaze is unsettling.

after a while, i forget he's even there.

i can't get this blue right

he says,
               "let me,"
and gets up to stand next to me and takes my brush from my hand
and leans over me to reach the palette,
holding my wrists back with his other hand to prevent me from
stopping him,
and i watch angrily
as he mixes blues and greys and purples and greens and whites
together
and

paints.

i don't speak until a long while later.

"thanks."

"no worries."

and that's that.