Still Life

A still life. You in the bed, my bed, leaning against the wall in repose and boxer shorts. Seen from the kitchen, frame of the doorway as I make espresso. You are waiting, exhausted. Maybe you’ll fall asleep there. But for now you watch me, framed by the kitchen doorway. We are in different rooms; the air is still. I closed the windows so the birds wouldn’t wake you.

We are liars of time. We can pretend minutes are days. And we can forget and a whole morning can become minutes. Such lies.

Things that have never known words flop on the table in front of me. This is the diminishing. How an orange peeled with your hands can become something else. And then just an orange again. How the air in these rooms will rush out and leave the smell of paint and carpets like you were never here. Things become more real at a cost.