This Painting at the KMA Looks at Me While I am Look at It

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A white room is here and out there. Between is a painting’s faint space, which is looking to who? Me or you? I was trying to— I was looking for— but now I can’t remember. Your hands are at my waist and neck. Our feet find the carpet— your shoes, Dear, are utterly ridiculous. I’m not sure where to direct my apologies to, on your behalf— this small red flower in the center might do. If I could leave— but the door is just a line. The line is the floor and the ceiling and your mouth. What is more real in that room, this room— than the edge of a wall, an end table leg?

There were flowers then, and some rollie pollies under the log. Now nothing turns over and each shape is fixed. The thoughts I had exited the frame last year. I thought we were here to see the art I want to murmur not so nicely in your ear but I can already hear what you don’t say which is you are the art darling Get out, get out, the only thing left for some giant hand to pluck up is that cardinal on top of the pear tree. Not featured in this exhibit: that cardinal, the frog in my mother’s pond, things I dreamed about when I was eight, Garfield, there’s not room now for even the water drops on the corners of their mouths. I look out from the corner of my eye.