Reflections of Oceans and Eyes

                                    ~•~

I have sat and moved various times, but I do not normally sit in a place more than once. However, because of a young woman with a certain kind of gaze, I did. Wistful, down-trodden, unbearably intriguing. She is the only person in her painting not carrying an umbrella. Maybe she forgot, maybe she doesn’t feel the need to protect her tightened hair and pinned-up corset, maybe she doesn’t want to hide from the sky – maybe she just doesn’t notice. There is a man behind her – he has a yellow-red beard. But she doesn’t notice him. He looks at her as if he wants to curl a finger into her hair or place two under her chin, so that he could raise her down-trodden eyes to him – and maybe the man desires to do so as well.

   Look down instead, and there is someone staring at me I didn’t notice before. A little girl with golden hair, tucked away in between her mother’s skirts. But she is not shy – she stares. She beat me. Her eyes are blue, like mine. I may have thought my eyes were a reflection of her own, but I look back at the wistful woman, and I can’t help but think her eyes are dark because their color has leaked into mine. I can’t see anymore. I need to take off my glasses, rub my eyes. I need to walk away. I want to go home.

                                   ~•~

Stairs. Fingers claw the rail. A hall. Palm flattens to the wall. A door. Push or pull? I hear a bird, a gull. A sink. Water, but not waves. I cup my hands and splash. Look out the window: why are there so many birds now? Rub my eyes. They’re so loud I can’t hear myself think. A mirror, a pause. What happened to my eyes?

                                  ~•~

Men and a few women strut or run back and forth across the wood floor, the heels of their boots cracking like spits and echoes bouncing like yells. A wistful woman wishes she could see more than her own feet. A yellow-bearded man wishes he could see more than the brown of her hair. A golden-haired little girl wishes she couldn’t see at all. Have you ever heard of an ocean whose waves cease and gulls silence when the sun goes down? They are everywhere, but to the attendee, there are none.

Portrait of a Daughter
By Ellie Carlos

“­Are you going to eat yet?”

The girl had an elbow propped on the brown table with one cheek pressed into her palm. The father didn’t look up to answer her.

“Let me finish my coffee first.”

She groaned.

“I got up half an hour ago and you just started?”

The father continued to sip from his blue mug with his eyes half closed. So, the girl left the room to continue her book about cats and croquet.

Twenty minutes later, the father stepped into the parlor with his painting supplies but found the girl asleep in her chair. He decided to leave her be but she was not happy when she woke up an hour later.

“You let me sleep? Now I’ve wasted the whole morning.”

“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

The girl straightened up in her seat, pushed a few hairs back into place, and gave a quick nod to show that she was ready.

“Great. Now just sit still for a moment.”

The father began to sketch an outline of the girl with his black pencil. He started with her square head, continued his way down to the puffy sleeves of her black dress, and then focused on the features of her face.

When he had gotten the shape of her nose just right, the girl slouched into her seat with her arms raised above her head.

“Sweetheart, please. Just sit still a moment.”

“Do you happen to know when we’re going to eat lunch?”

“You’re already thinking of eating? I have to get your portrait done.”

“Well, yeah but I didn’t know that it would take this long.”

The father sighed.

“Well I guess we can continue this later. So okay, let’s eat.”

The girl sprang from her creaky seat to see what the father had done so far but when she saw the canvas, she frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do I really look like that?”

“You don’t like it?”

“I mean, it just doesn’t look like me.”

The father studied his sketch for a few seconds and didn’t think that any line was out of place. And he was right. Every detail and feature that his pencil had recreated was just as it looked.

“I look too serious, I think,” the girl added after some thoughtful moments.

She was also right. In the sketch, her back was straight and her eyes looked sternly into the distance. Good manners and proper posture would not be the first words that one would use to describe the girl.

“How about this,” the father said. “I’ll start over when we get back.”

The girl smiled for half a second but then quickly hid her joy.

“If you want to, I guess you can,” the girl said with a shrug.

After a quick meal, the girl got back in her seat as the father erased his old sketch.

“Wait one second, I’m not ready yet,” said the girl as she slouched once again in her seat, putting her hands behind her head with one elbow in the air and the other hanging off the armrest.

“Okay, now I’m ready.”

“You’re going to sit like that?”

“Yes.”

“Are you comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t you like to sit like a lady for your p­­­­ortrait?”
The girl frowned.

“I am a lady and this is how I shall sit.”
The father was too tired to convince her to do otherwise but secretly smiled behind the canvas as he began to move his pencil again.

For the next few hours, the girl didn’t move an inch or utter a syllable until the father had put the last stroke of rose in her cheeks with his brush.

“What do you think?”

The daughter smiled softly as she looked at her father’s painting.

“I like it.”