STILL LIFE

Once, I drew a table with a vase on it.

I drew a flower beside the vase. A checkered floor beneath the table.

I drew these objects again and again. A chair and

a lamp joined them, a window, a painting on the wall. A family of things.

The rooms began to hold more

Of something. They become a maze of rooms, folded and echoed out. Once, I drew a painting in a room.

The painting was of a body. The body was mine, or me. Inanimate, unquestionably, at home.

So then there was a painting of this body in each room and so I learned the table, the vase, the lamp, the chair, were my selves too. The world grows.

Once, they came out of my hands in earth, these objects that existed already, elsewhere, somewhere like always, at the edge of my mind.

They have weight. And finally the room lives

on its own.

Before you is a room, the room is really a window. This world overlaps. The window is a door if you want. Would you like to come in?