“Empty”

By Ron Stultz

He sits on a stool, feet propped against the window sill,  just staring: staring out at the street, the cars, the people. 

He is empty.  

The canvas, his last canvas, the paint on it has been dry for a week. 

He has no motivation, no desire, and no concept of what he should do next.

In fact, if he thinks about it, he is angry at himself, disguised with himself. All his work for past year has been nothing but variations of a theme.

He feels more like an assembly line, a factory, than an artist. 

He knows he should stop, should quit, he should move away. He should be a farmer, anything, but what he is doing. 

As he stares, he sees a woman walk by and for some reason she catches his eye.

Compact, pert, dressed smartly, black, rounded toe shoes with a strap. She carries a black small black bag over her left shoulder, as if she is walking someplace in earnest. He watches as she goes out of sight and then he is again: empty. 

As he stares, he begins to see an image: a one floor walkup apartment. And then, a shoe, a shoe on the floor, a rounded toe shoe with a strap, turned on its side, on the edge of a pool of liquid. And then he begins to see the torso, the woman, the women he has just seen, hanging from a rafter in the small one floor walkup. One shoe still on, urine dripping off the left leg. 

The bare arms and hands have no rings, nor jewelry and he can see a small bureau, and there lined, are all her things, all perfectly aligned. 

He can see her and feel her loneliness, her despair and he can see how he could paint it: the harrows on her face; her hands how they lay so motionless by her sides; the dress so neatly fitted around her. 

“No, he cannot go there.” 

“He cannot see that.” 

“He cannot share that.” 

“He cannot paint that.”

“No, he has seen, been, felt, that before.” And has always refused to paint it 

He will refuse again this time. 

That is too sacred, too secret.

He is just empty.