“No; no, please; no more.” Art stretches on the canvas, the sun fallen half-way round the sky, having sweated its way to zenith, now drying and diminishing toward the end of its day, the end.

“But why? I thought the work was just beginning? I thought: a little more color, how it changes from morning to noon (when the light is really too terribly flattening, don’t you agree?), and now again from noon to night, when it picks up a… poignancy… that almost causes fruit to ripen…”

“When you draw it that way.”

He flicks the cord that holds the curtain, the knot unties itself, and the weight of fabric (assisted as it was by gravity, whose innate desire is to pull things close, lie down! it commands and, sooner than later, you acquiesce) makes the hand of that curtain clap in an audible rush of reeds, a sigh of wind through marsh, hush of dry leaves in soft rain, then silence. The room is dark. The inner light of the fruit is revealed… to have been an outer light after all. Once plucked: still life.

“No, it’s not when I draw it that way. It just is, whether illuminated or not. If you can’t bear to look, that’s one thing; if beauty is painful when not consumed, that’s one thing. But I hold the brush, and I will paint it in the dark if need be. If no one knows the fruit was delicious, I do.”

There is no sound now but breath. Breath becomes something received and something offered. Indrawn, the color and flavor of the pear is understood; exhaled, the brush sighs on the page, and becomes a life’s harvest. The breath is a soft rasp, cutting a hole in the darkness, through which darkness escapes. The rasp grows quieter, and shakes. The color and flavor of the pear, a memory relived; the tongue remembers the cool sweetness of the flesh; how the edge of the teeth teased the surface; the briefest resistance, and the satisfied surrender of sweet nectar; the life-given; the life-received; the circle that is not round; the gravity that carries what is finished so gently, so firmly, in transparent fists, to earth; the salted water that stains the soil; the brevity of a shout, the name being called; no answer; the fading memory of the touch; the indelible memory of the heart; the sun drying, the light falling, blue water blue water blue, shhhhhhhhhhhh.

“No more; I have had enough already.”

Art may be stretched upon the canvas, the hull rocking, the old planks knocking, the brush at rest, the hands, having spoken, patient at last. Complete darkness, so dark the eyes see themselves. Except…

What was that…? The smallest flicker…? Of light imagined? Or real?

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