There is gold on the wall, except it’s not really there. & there is gold on the shutters & somewhere beyond, a gold that can’t be squeezed in.

 

The sky is the blue of not-sky, except it fades to green & then white above the buildings, like a song that has ended before the last note & its silence.

 

There is something living that grabs at the pieces, except by grabbing it overshadows, i.e., the emptiness is not looking for a shadow to fill it, i.e., it is all shadows & doesn’t know it yet.

 

Let us imagine, for a moment, a girl into this scene. She is on the bed, feet propped up on the not-carved headboard. There is a whirring. A fan, maybe, blurring its way into day: or night: or the gap in between we can call dawn:dusk.

 

It doesn’t matter, the direction we’re moving in. Like the fan.

 

The room’s wall is mud, but let us imagine it pea-green instead. The closet is not empty like the edges of a half-rendered world but instead filled with things we won’t take the time to sort through. Here’s what we know: On the outside, there is a mirror: in the mirror, the gold.

 

The windows beyond this window are dark, but let us imagine the not-shadow in them, too. & somewhere, there is a grandmother & she is at the stove & a granddaughter sits at the head of the scratched table (eyes closed). Or, let the granddaughter instead be standing, mixing the onions & garlic into the tomato sauce. The promise of rice is under the silver lid & it’s threaded through with embroidery-silk vermicelli that in another moment we could call gold.

 

The fan is still moving. The girl’s voice in her head drowns its drone out.

 

Missing from this scene: a grandfather. Missing from this scene: [].

 

Shall we imagine them in? Elsewhere the sky is a moment we know the name for.

 

But return to the window: In it, the girl in the room with the pea-green walls & the gold is cast on her eyelashes.

 

& in another window entirely, another girl. She, on the bed, feet dangling off the side, opens her mouth (to slivers of moon).

 

But in this window, a half-hour beyond, this girl yanks at the shutters, attempts to force them into cascade. She remembers & remembered & will remember a home on the other side of the gold

 

where the sky is also in between dawn:dusk because we can pretend the clock hands point to the same silhouette. But in that world, there are no shutters, just an iron torrent, & she doesn’t have to let the light in.