painting the key

Our front door is actually a gate, and at night we bar ourselves in with a 2x4.

Last night, Lauren crouched on the warehouse floor and painted the wooden bar. I sat on a sofa nearby, polishing a poem about theater lights and misguided sisters. I looked up, groping for the word to replace "reticence," and I saw Lauren coating the 2x4 in black, then adding a dot of red. She was posed over her work like a child drawing lazy curlicues in the sand.

I decided to scratch the whole sentence and write instead about a mouth hidden behind pale fingers. When I looked up again, she was smearing the red dots and transforming the wood into a black widow. I returned to my writing and for a long time struggled with where to end the poem. It wasn't until Lauren stood and took several paces away from the board, to then turn and regard her handiwork that my own eyes lifted again. She stared at the 2x4, and I stared at her staring at it until she looked up and we both laughed.

It's all the same. Poem, painting, craft. Creation, polish, regard.

But that spell was broken when Hamer found a new place. In these nine days, she has stretched the social fabric of the warehouse to accommodate herself. And now that she's leaving, I fear it will never fit us properly again.