The painting is of a door, its wood so warped

with moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar

leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggest

something sweet and almost unreachable

behind the door—and you sit in your

room working on the bills or those comforting

lists that make you believe you have

finally created time, wide open spaces

of emptiness, you are free to use or not use;

but you keep looking at that gap, keep

peering in, trying to see what is there, and

occasionally you get up and touch it,

as if you might feel it, what is there.

I am being coy. I am not talking about

you, but me. And it is not a door,

but a painting of a naked woman sitting

like a pear on a perch, her knees drawn up

to her chest, her head buried between her knees,

her feet touching, and the shadow between

her shins, and her thighs whispering

flesh. Those fingers of her left hand

carry the string of a yoyo, bouncing

like a sandwich pushcart below her toes.

Those are the only things that move

on this woman whose silence, the silence

of her body, is what moves me to speak.