Studio

i went into my dad’s studio
and there was the most beautiful painting

it was of a lemon

i know this because
at that point the only things
he painted were lemons and sardines.

i was pretty sure this one wasn’t a sardine,
so i concluded that it must be a lemon

“that looks great”, i said
“yeah. it does”, he said.
“it’s not finished, though”, he said

“it looks finished”, i said
“it’s not, though”, he said

i went down to the studio the next day

it looked like he’d been up all night

he was sitting in a wicker chair
gazing at the painting
and smoking a cigarette

the painting from yesterday was gone,
and in its place was a canvas of the same size and shape
except that it appeared to be totally covered in mud brown

he’d destroyed the entire thing

“what happened to the painting”, i said

he drew my attention to a tiny corner of the painting i’d overlooked
where a ragged stripe of pink
lay across a deep blue square

“look at that colour combination”, he said.
“that is true”, he said

a week later the painting was different again
i don’t even remember if that colour combination
was still there in the final piece

what i do remember is that
he’d been working on that painting
for two months solid
12 hours a day, he worked from dawn to dusk
and a week before the show
he threw it all away
for a tiny patch of colour
that was true