Small Pleasures 1913

Homeless and stinking of Night Train she leaned in close and gave me the news, right there, right in front of the Kandinsky. The words hit me square and laid me out emotionally flat with her simple sentence: “You never really loved me, you just put up with me all those years. Sleeping with whores.” Her voice cracking under the pain. 

It wasn’t true, I didn’t even know her. People turned to look at me curiously like one of the flawed masterpieces. The mental illness seeping out from around her swollen eyes, welling up as the tears fell from her red blotched cheeks landing in coin-shaped drops on the clean museum floor. Exposed for all to see like the beautiful cracked-up painting on the wall. The misshapen lines and busted-up tones and exploding colors draped in complacency and unwashed hands. The painting captured her pain in two-dimensional form. I glanced down to catch myself from looking her in the eye. No eye contact. I could still hear her voice as I walked away but it ran off in mumbled tones of buttery nonsense. The crowded room all stared in disgust at my exit.