Still Life

This is how it should be—

In the morning, I would go into my kitchen, with its golden oak cabinets and white tile counter tops, where I would grind some fine brown coffee beans—a special blend, grown high in the Andes where the air is so sharp it can slice your lungs. When the coffee has finished brewing, I would pour it into a delicate gold-rimmed demitasse, and the steam would rise, rich and fragrant, almost as satisfying as that very first taste.

I would take my cup and one freshly-baked, flaky croissant, and walk out onto the deck. From there, I would see the sun as it fights its way through the pine trees, struggling to reach the sky. The first rays color the darkness orange and red, purple and gold, and as the night is conquered, the sun would emerge victorious.

On the deck, there is one small glass-topped table with wrought iron legs, a wicker rocker with a thick purple-flowered seat cushion, and my easel.

I look at the sky and then at my paint box and colored pencils, waiting on the shelf below the empty canvas. Finally, with slow, deliberate strokes, I begin to sketch my world—the pines, with each needle meticulously placed on each branch and each branch grafted carefully onto the trunk, and the sky: its colors melting and bleeding into each other like a dying harlequin.

And while I work, the kittens would come out to investigate the world in which they find themselves. The white one—the baby, as I think of her—immediately leaps into the rocker and settles down, her tail curling around to hide her face like a mask. Her blue eyes would move unceasingly from side to side, watching me as I bring the sun and sky onto the canvas.

The black one would first twine around my ankles, tickling my skin with his tail, before vaulting onto the wooden railing, as much at ease as though it was six feet wide instead of six inches, as though the ground below was not twenty feet away.

He would pace along the edge—a jungle predator hunting for food—until, tired of the game, he joins his mate in the chair where they sleep together—black and white, night and day—curled into a furry circle.

There is no radio, no telephone, no sound except the wind and the birds and the stream, far below and hidden by the underbrush. I can hear the water, even high on my deck, rushing and tumbling over rocks worn smooth by its endless caress.

Later, when I grow tired of standing at the easel, I would slip into a pair of old soft jeans, and walk through the woods in search of blackberries for lunch. With moccasins in hand, I’d ford the stream, minnows teasing my toes and waterbugs dancing on the sparkling surface.

When I reach the other side, I push through the brambles and wild rose bushes to find the meadow where the blackberries grow the best. Here, in the open sunlight, they are rich to bursting, and I am painted purple and red as I pluck them, resisting, from their stems. I gather them in my basket and slip them in my mouth, tasting the morning sun on my tongue.

Later again, much later, I would rest in my rocking chair, drinking champagne from a delicately etched crystal goblet, watching the stars glitter in the darkening sky. The fireflies dance and dart around the edges of the deck, and moths eagerly, willingly dive to their deaths into the white pillar candle burning in a hand-thrown pottery bowl.

I would stretch my legs out before me, scratched and tired from the afternoon walk, and rest my head on the back of the chair. My fingers are tinted with sunrise colors, the paint permanently stained into my skin from endless mornings spent at my easel, and I can no longer remember the true color of my flesh.

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I think about this sometimes, on cold rainy mornings while I am waiting for the water to boil. When the steam rises from the aluminum spout, I can make my coffee—stirring bubbling water into the dull black crystals waiting at the bottom of the chipped, stained cup.

I have ten minutes to drink my coffee, another ten minutes allotted for the stairs, and yet ten more for the walk to the corner bus stop. There I wait, amid blaring horns and choking exhaust fumes, early-morning drunks and street people curled like rags on the steam grate.

This is how it is.