Yelena and Annabelle are in my apartment. Not simply my visual impression of them but their voices, their bodies, their souls. This is the first time I’ve ever seen them sleeping together on my bed, making the same outline as Karen had as I painted her on the couch.
Yelena is solemn and sweet in her sleep. Annabelle is a symphony of silence.
Yelena has changed. She is an adventurer, and has followed me here. She has never been far from her homes in Canada and Russia before—except for when I finally convinced her to go to Spain with me. She lived in Russia until she was six, when her family moved to Canada. She described the Russian wheat fields in the region near Moscow where she lived, golden and flowing, with the wind beneath wide expanses of sky, that have produced themselves to me in my sleeping moments.
She is comfortable in her loneliness, she has told me before. What does this mean? Am I as comfortable in my own as I profess to be?
My paint brush flicks along the lines of Yelena’s body from the nape of her neck to the small of her back, down to the extent of her polished toenails. After creating a single portrait of Yelena I go on to paint a multitude of different views of Annabelle. She is exquisite, a baby Greek goddess. Look at those tiny, as yet unformed fingers. She is baby Aphrodite, singing amidst the foaming waves of the sea. She is born in, and will rise from, the sea.
Annabelle stirs. The form is blurred, inconstant, changing. My brush moves with her, caresses her, forms her outline anew once again. Her form is the sincerity and the reliability of change.
Annabelle rises to sit vertically on the bed and rubs her eyes. She yawns, and stretches a baby feline stretch. Looking over at the sky outside, I see that it is overcast for the first time that I’ve been here. I have a difficult time accepting that Annabelle and Yelena, who is still sleeping, are here in front of me.
I imagine with fear that they are sadly strangers with similar features to those I have known, who upon closer inspection are revealed to be unfamiliar to me....