Longer post: Relics.

At the museum, the billowing steamers in a painting are brushed into being. Their tall masts look like spindles, and the yellowy sea water reflects the fog and mist settling around the ships. In another, a road winds through a town and up into rolling hills. A barrel-like caravan, decorated with lace and bells, travels upon it in late evening light. The heavy horses that pull it hang their heads wearily, as if they have been to the end of the world and back. It looks as if it has jumped off the pages of a folk story and onto the road. Nearby, a man sits in a separate gilded frame from his wife. The light shines on his oily forehead and red leather chair, and he looks ready to laugh at you. His wife is decorated with white roses, pink ribbon, stiff lace. Her eyes are downcast but a smile plays on her lips. Her gold wedding ring shines in the light and she carries a brooch bearing her husband’s image at her neck. They both have secrets.

I see him enter the room. Out of the corner of my eye his gangly frame moves nearer and I can hear his footsteps, loud and slow, above all of the other noise. Can I get out of the room before he sees me? Slowly edge away, through the door and around the corner. Slowly, slowly…

A shepherd moves into my line of vision, guiding his sheep towards the horizon as birds fly in the sky. They flutter and dip without movement. Two men look up, bathed in misty moonlight, no hint of their conversation. Clear as a photograph, incredible.

Oh no…he’s seen me. Look at something else, act like you haven’t seen him. Maybe he won’t bother, perhaps he’ll turn around and walk out and realise it’s a bad idea. He’s stopped to look at a painting. His face looks strange. Maybe it’s the light but he looks older, more tired.

The lovers twist into each others arms, shining in black marble, so blissfully unaware, set in stone as they are captured in a final moment of happiness. Their legs and arms are mixed up, part of the same, part of the whole.

He’s walking over. Quick, move along. His footsteps are coming up behind me like a lumbering giant. I may as well stop, he’ll catch up with me eventually. I don’t want him to think that I was running away.

Limestone. Two people emerge out of it in an unfinished kiss, trapped, suspended. Painted eyes stare from all four corners of the room. People long dead hang on the walls of the museum.

‘Alright?’ What am I going to say? I come up with -
‘Hello. Haven’t seen you in…well…you know, seems a long time… anyway, these paintings are amazing!’
‘Yeah they’re alright. Seen the boats?’
‘Yeah, yeah they’re all really good.’
Silence. I don’t know where to look.
‘Listen, Sarah, can we go get a coffee and some cake?’ Great. Just great.
‘Sure. That’d be…nice.’ Idiot. Why do this?

We wander down the cold staircase, past the victorious Persius holding Medusa’s head aloft, and from a side room volcanoes explode and dinosaurs roar. We are taken back in time.

‘How are you anyway Chris?’
‘Yeah, I’m O.K thanks. You? How’s the new house? As “wonderful” as you’d imagined?’
‘C’mon, no need to be like that. But I mean really…how are you?’ What on earth am I starting this conversation for? I could have avoided this subject, could have gone round and round in circles until we both got bored but no, I bloody well had to remind him. Idiot.

‘I’ve been better. How do you think I am?!’
‘Sorry.’
We walk through the hall with the big domed, glass roof, which washes everything lilac through the stained glass, sit in the café, and order coffee and cake.

‘So what are you up to at the moment?’ What else am I meant to say? Steer clear of anything that might make him upset, just keep talking about jobs and work. That should be safe ground.
‘Well, did I tell you I might be going abroad for a while? New job. Paris.’
‘No way, that’s great! When d’you start? Oh you’ve got some cake -’ I reach over and brush his cheek where the crumbs have settled. He looks me square in the face. Shit.
‘So, Paris?’
‘Oh…Hopefully next month.’
‘That’s good. Probably be nice to get away for a while!’
‘Yeah, well…you know.’
We finish our coffee and cake and walk back up the grand marble staircase and underneath the lilac dome, entering a carpeted room. We go through the heavy and wooden doors in front of us, and into the room with the paintings. It is just us. Oh Chris, I’m so sorry. He goes to one end, I go to another, admiring the pictures. My footsteps echo across the wooden floor and I cast a double shadow in the strange lighting. I wander over from my paintings of people and life to his of ships and industry. We stand, just looking. My arm brushes his for a second and I jump back.
Silence.
‘I just…I can’t...’ He looks at me. His childlike face is ready to cave in and his voice stumbles over his words, strained and hurt. Reach out, help him, don't just stand there watching him cry. He shakes his head and walks out, leaving me with the paintings and sculptures and electricity in the air. His smell lingers in the room. I try to wander around.

In an oil painting, a storm is whipped up in greenish yellow light and I want to be there, blown about by the wind, rain in my face, releasing my guilt. There is no easy way, never will be. A naked woman covers herself up, head buried in her arm, blocking out the world, carved out of a pearly white stone. I wish I could have made this easier for him, but instead I will always be sorry. I will always know that I left him, with those thoughts, and that much uncertainty, alone. As I walk out of the museum, the light from the lilac dome illuminates the coffee shop and I see him, sitting alone. I should go over and comfort him, try to make it better. But that will only remind him… I look at him one last time, an image that will always be ingrained in my memory, and walk outside, the fresh air bursting onto my face like a cold foamy wave. I carry on with my life, while he struggles to build a new one for himself. On my trip to the museum, I have added to its collection. I leave behind a relic of my past, broken and solitary, in the museum café.