Our third
painting from the works of Edward Hopper, selected by Rob, is Summer Evening,
1947. Our three stories are below.
I am so sick
of this. I feel like I rarely manage to contribute anything and gain even less.
It’s as though, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much care or thought I
put into every interaction, always establishing a common interest in
conversation, remembering facts about others, inquiring into their happiness
and just being plain old polite. I am always left lonesome, riddled with
self-humiliation, wondering why I even bother, and would anyone notice if I was
no longer here. It’s as though, without my input, without my asking or making
the first move with those I meet, I would be forever stood in silence. Those
around me are always exchanging interest in each other’s lives, but never with
me. I am always the one asking, never being asked. This feeling of un-want, of
neglect, has always been brushed aside, sheltered in my subconscious by other
permutations of frustration at myself and my thoughts. Convincing myself that I
read too far into what those around me think; inventing this reality of
neglectful interactions by way of coping with, no....not coping with, heeding
an inherent lack of self-worth, juxtaposed with paranoia. I am so sick of this.
I could
return to the nullified seclusion of a former dependency, sticking pins in
everywhere possible, until the only hole remaining screams and chokes as I take
the plunge into a concrete shoed nothingness, in amongst the reed coated bed of
a forgotten river: the water of which we skimmed stones and kissed in the long
grass, many eons ago. You would watch and pay little notice to my demise, with
the silent stare you hold at me now. Of all the introverted bitterness
surrounding you I have never felt, then ultimately known, how to hate so
strong. Segregated from a passion of the past, I find myself at a wits end when
in a constant head hung stance of unjustified guilt in your presence. Why do
you plague me with such cold contempt? When did you change? When did the
smiling, dancing laughter of our love dissolve into a drawn grey grimace of an
empty mind? I mean nothing to you now, is that right? Is that it? If so then
why do you keep me here, a prisoner in my own life?
Free me,
Jailor! Free me from this husk of an aged unity, I shall walk from this veranda
and merge into the darkness yonder, taking the faceless fruit of our passions
with me as I seek an end in the encroaching black of the wild outside. May the
memory of your neglect burden you as the unkindness you dealt to me burdens the
hope we had in the unborn. I sincerely hope your hate is justified for thee,
justified in your view by the denying of a life, a life that we seeded but
never bloomed. You never wanted it anyway did you, and now it can never happen.
Who gives you the right? And why do I still sit here being hatefully ignored,
in this deafening silence?
Summer
Evening
Katy Park
He is not
coming home. I lay on the floor and I wait for him. I imagine the door
slamming, once and once again. I plan to be busy as he walks in, and think of
various poses and activities that will prevent him from seeing that I am
waiting. I practice laying in different places. I play with the child. I sing
and I stare at the crisp linen ceiling. I am an imitation of a life, pretending
and waiting. He is not coming home.
As the day
turns blue with night, I find myself outside. Standing and breathing the air -
a believable enough occupation on a night so smooth and silent. I lean against
the wood and imagine I can feel the years it spent as a tree pressing into my
back like fingertips. I ask it to stop.
He is
standing next to me.
Summer
Evening
Thom Kofoed
“I can’t
believe Fran is being like this.“ she said and then paused and looked across at
me. In the silence I realised that I hadn’t been listening since she had told
me about her dog and the time up at the lake by Billy’s old place, and now she
was talking about Fran and swirling a number eight into the dust on the porch
with her foot.
Fran with
the birthmark on the tip of her elbow.
Fran with
her tiny shoes.
Fran the
girl I had kissed once, between Spring and Summer as fireworks banged and
sizzled and swished. The girl who pulled away and put her hand on her mouth.
The girl who giggled and twisted her orange hair around her fingers and said
“You’re quite something,” and then “you really, really are.”
June was
still looking across at me, her face made up of triangles and squares, and I
jumped upon the first thing I could think of and said “It isn’t your fault,
June” and her face softened and became a circle in the moonlight.
The porch
light flickered and then stopped and two moths fizzed in its heat. She smiled a
half smile across one side of her face and looked down at the eight on the
floor. She didn’t speak. I supposed I had said the right thing so followed it up
with “You’re a good kid, June” and patted her leg; a physical full stop, a lid,
a line drawn underneath.
She scooted
backwards on the porch wall and tucked her hands underneath her thighs and I
scuttled away and sat down on the porch step beneath the empty bowl sky. I
could feel her loneliness like an animal behind me, felt its breath low and
heavy on my neck, and I adjusted my collar and scratched at my head. June began
to whistle and the noise sounded alien amongst the trees. They sat still inside
the evening as if they had been replaced by photographs. The whole night was a
picture torn from a catalogue, a postcard, a scene from the back of a cereal
box. It was real and imagined and June felt familiar and new all at once.
Somewhere behind the house I heard a car backfire once and then twice and she
whispered "She isn't yours to fix, June" as she kicked through the
dust and made a tiny tornado with her feet.
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