We sit in a painting. The air is cold and I fold myself against him, skin prickling with goosebumps but he is there, wide and warm. 
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“My name means oak,” he tells me. He’s told me three times now but I remembered after the first.
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Legs much longer than mine stretch on the exhibit floor that is illuminated with projected specks of color. The last time our legs were side-by-side we collapsed on sheets damp from a spilled cocktail of he and I. Sweat still drying, breath still being caught, my legs still spread freely, me, bare to the cream-walled hotel room around us. His head found my breast to rest, heavy but welcome. 
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Like the intrusive thoughts you have while standing on a precipice–one step forward to see what cacophony of disaster would happen–with him, my words carefreely tumble over cliffs. My fingers absentmindedly swim through his hair that he worries is thinning. We talk and laugh as I ignore the stands falling from his scalp to my skin.
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We sit in a painting. His crimson socks peek from conservative shoes the color of wet dirt. Brown, like the stoic, oak man with dulled emotions that he describes himself to be, but I see the red, lightness and humor, depth of feeling, wit and stories, brighter than the brushstrokes. 
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The red socks. That is why I am here. 
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Bach filling the cold air, me tethered to his right arm draped over my left knee, a silver ring on his forefinger pointed outward. His heart is unclaimed. And mine, which could be his if I allow a step off the cliff, sees the ring and remembers. My heart takes a step back.
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I catch the silhouette of his lips and unbidden, my mind leaps off the edge. I remember his tongue, soft and gentle, filling my mouth, mine then running along the gravelly stubble of his chin. I feel warmth in my stomach, drifting lower, the cocktail of us still resting between my thighs from when it leaked out of me as we were walking earlier, my hand looped in his arm. 
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I can still hear his whistle that found me when he first saw me walking down the white terraced house-lined street. Two years of talking, two planes and trains, a country neither of us live in, a whistle, cream walls, and we are here.
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We sit in a painting I now recognize but I wish I didn’t. The eyes of Van Gogh, still taking shape twelve feet high, reflect on the wall in front of me. I long to stay here, beside him, his oak to my cold, our cocktail wetness between my legs, the memory of his mouth filling mine, just this morning. 
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Let me just be in the brushstrokes; undone, unknown, unfinished.
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“Oh, it’s Van Gogh,” he says, the Irish of his O’s round and full. “Ok, time to go?”
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No, please stay. But these words know to take a step back from the edge.
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“Sure,” I say, my lips forming a smile that doesn’t touch my eyes as they follow the glint of the Claddagh ring leaving my side. 

Published 20th June, 2024.

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Morgan Stone earned an MA from New York University in applied psychology and counseling, a BA from Tulane University in psychology and currently works as a school counselor. She is also a certified integrated trauma and emotional wellness coach. After her day job, she comes home to be a single mom of three children. She spends her nights meditating, practicing yoga, savoring sips of whiskey, adding lines to pen and ink drawings, and above all else, writing. She won first prize in SPS Studios Inc., Blue Mountain Arts poetry contest, and have published poetry and fiction in “Sad Girl Diaries,” “P.S. I Love You,” “The Coil,” “Chalkboard Magazine,” “Lit Up,” and has three upcoming poetry publications in “Tofu Ink Arts Press.”

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