It is around two in the afternoon. The studio smells of turpentine and old dust, and I stand before a painting that fills an entire corner.
The woman wears an extravagant pink hat, a blue-and-white polka-dot top, and enormous sunglasses. Something distorted is reflected in the lenses, perhaps the version of me looking at her now.
Memory breaks through without warning. I think of someone from long ago and of a relationship tangled with tenderness and pain: warmth like sharing a roasted sweet potato on a winter night, and a cut as small but persistent as paper against a finger.
Art is said to cut through the hard shell of the everyday and touch what remains soft beneath it. Yet perhaps the painting itself carries no grand meaning. She never wore polka dots or liked pink. It is only the sunglasses. She always looked at me from behind sunglasses, and that once hurt deeply.
I sigh and turn away. The smell of turpentine remains. The world continues, as ordinary and inexplicable as before.