The Museum Richard Siken

Two lovers went to a museum and wandered the
rooms. He saw a painting and stood in front of it
for too long. It was a few minutes before she
realized he had gotten stuck. He was stuck looking
at a painting. She stood next to him, looking at his
face and then the face in the painting. What do you
see? she asked. I don't know, he said. He didn't
know. She was disappointed, then bored. He was
looking at a face and she was looking at her watch.
This is where everything changed. There was now
a distance between them. He was looking at a face
but it might as well have been a cabbage or a
sugar beet. Perhaps it was something about yellow
near pink. He didn't know how to say it. Years later
he still didn't know how to say it, and she was gone.