Diptych by Maria Panfiorova

As the time was going by and clock’s ticking was carving,
second by second, a hole in my brain, dust settled, then I blew it away, then it settled again. So I watched and counted, staring at the last year calendar with some van Gogh reproduction — faded and gloomy, both calendar and sunflowers. I wonder if yellow always was a depressing color — of decay and lifelessness — or it was just time.
All the days in long past August were crossed. There was nobody in the waiting room.
***
“Van Gogh, you see,” she took my forearm, “is much better in person.”
“Oh, so you knew him!” The gallery was empty, so I didn’t care about loudness of my voice. “I’m very sorry for your loss then!”
“No need in that, we met postmortem,” she smiled and dragged me to one of the paintings. “But look closely, though.”
“August, a lot of sunflowers,” I looked closely, “a lot more than anybody would need to draw”.
“No, closer!”
I leaned towards it.
“Hmm, still nothing.”
“Closer!” she said and I leaned closer, long over the restricting line. As I was nearly touching it with my nose, seconds from triggering the alarm, paint had finally unblent.
“Oh, I see!” I laughed. “Very lovely colors”.