Do you know what I was thinking about the other day?

I was thinking about Pissaro’s flowers and, as always, about Monet’s rivers.

There’s going to be an impressionist exhibit at the National Gallery in the middle

of the year and of course I’m going but without you.

I’m glad you won’t be there, but all the same I wish you were.

I can’t look at art with other people because I like to think on my own but then again

how will I be able to think completely without speaking?

I’d like it if I spoke with you as I was looking.

Monet and Pissaro aren’t much good for conversation,

and, despite his talents, Degas doesn’t know how to paint ballerinas that talk.

I wish I was with you instead of old canvas jailed in their frames;

suddenly, afterwards, I realise that they’re just paper with colour on them

but when I tell you about them suddenly Degas’ dancers are dancing again and I can

see Monet’s haystacks rustling against the wind, and it makes me believe that the

flowers in Pissaro’s vases never had their petals fall off.

When we talk I’m recreating the world I just saw, and if only you were there to see it

with me because then we could make everything together and the two of us would

have been the only ones existing, and alive, at that small space of time with only a

fraction of the universe inching in to see us.