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She sat in the center of the room on a wooden stool, Her hair still; She was the image of wasted youth. The painter whispered the words of a sad song as the girl unwrapped a cigarette from a ribbon. She held it between her palms as if the painter’s poetry was for its birth. The windows were open and the wind was an aged piano. It called to her: “I play the melody of a funeral for you.” The painter stirred the paint; It was the color of eggshells. Then he traced a crack on the yellow wall with his thumb. She thought about that perfectly split crack, Its symmetry matching the wings of a blue jay. She remembered the first time she noticed it, the night before she kissed a boy. “Usually I don’t paint with others in the room,” the painter said. “I won’t bother you,” the girl replied. The painter’s brush painted white over the yellow, The brush strokes grew louder like rain, The rain screamed: “I remember your sister--how the two of you would laugh here, sleeping on opposite ends of these walls, how the two of you would tell stories.” The painter’s melody grew deeper, His song silenced the rain. He was a musician on the side, but his only audience was the walls. “My mother used to sing this to me before she passed,” the painter said. There was silence and the girl nodded. “My mother’s been gone almost ten years now. She never sang. Dad passed last June. He left me the house and it needed paint.” She watched the painter’s eyes as they followed the yellow. She remembered how much light entered the room, How it would be the color of a fireplace. The white paint stared back at her, bringing her porcelain cheeks to a river. The fireplace and river spoke softly: “We remember the time your parents painted the yellow.” From the window, she watched the painter walk down the cement sidewalk. The potholes of the sidewalk were like graves. The graves gave her the last words of her youth: “The yellow is gone. It’s dead.” She couldn’t hear the piano, the rain, or the river. The girl lit the cigarette as she watched the ribbon fall to the floor. It sat wasted next to the empty cans of paint. Her parents’ faces, her sister’s laugh, and the stories of her imagination were buried with the yellow. Only the shadow of a woman and the smoke of a cigarette remained, reflecting a gray of mourning onto the white.
Arielle Levy
