The Lives of Furniture IV: The Table

she started painting, tentatively,
from one corner, having penciled in
squares the previous weekend,
when he was gone camping, he said.
the color, baby blue for when she met him
as a young girl, his boyish face.
and from the other side, she painted
in squares, pink, her innocence.
The square of sunlight moved from
the entrance of the kitchen down the hall
way to the front door and she painted,
pink squares from one side, blue
from the other, more and more feverishly
as dusk approached, then slowly,
sadly as the answer become clear to her now.
The pink and blue squares approached
but never merged, passing each other
like two trains at midnight, the moan of
their whistles dissipating into the
darkness.