We start with still-lives [this is expected]. Bowls of fruit arranged on tables, requisite apples, pears, grapes. A curious pineapple has snuck its way in. A thin vase with a lonely flower, child-sized chairs stacked just so.
I’m suspicious of stillness. I focus on stop-motion squirrels in the window, trees revered then forgotten, their limbs jutting into the horizon. My fingers bruised with purple ink—lefties never quite fit—I mix my colors into mud.
I am a valley among peaks, compressed before raised. Chronically razed. A blank page soaked, body curled, unqualified. A landline phone affixed, wire enjambed.
You see quirks where I know cracks, flip full magazine pages while I hold jumbled pieces. Newspaper clippings in halves, longing, flexed and ready.
I am voracious in my wanting to know, but knowing isn’t a crux. A diagnosis is just a notation, a string of digits for billing. A confirmation growing hazy, quickly [but also slowly] moving away. Unimportant in its arrival: a shrug, a nod.
I am quiet while you speak, watching. Not quite listening, while you explain to me what I have lived. I think of the Xanax bottle on the shelf, the set of new paints, unopened. To be enjoyed at the summit. Balls of clay in a box, lazily waiting. A bowl of apples, a single stem.
Taryn Ocko Beato is a writer, mixed media artist, and audiobook producer. She studied creative writing and film at the University of Rochester, and received a Master of Arts from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Taryn lives in New York with her husband, son, and sweet rescue dog, Darby.