The Painting She knew she shouldnt have returned (I know) when she stood knocking on the door,

when the door opened and her father, her own father, let her in. His eyes had gone grey over twenty years, gone grey and passive and infinitely untouchable, two splotches of a vast dead sky, his eyes. Gone grey watching for her, for when she would come, on the sun-drenched gravel path, under the guava trees with their thick leaves he had watched through the glass doors for when she would come, with the evening gone late and loving and repentant red behind her (I know, I know all). But when she came it was a damp morning, cast over with rain and latened by trains, and she was miserable and strained and shadowed, drawn and puppetted by unfamiliar expectations, unsure if they were his or hers or just echoes in her heartbeat of the stories he had regaled her with on his then young lap (I know all, I know all, I am a painting on the wall). And she knocked on the door in damp defiance, its cracked lintel streaming a half-light of familiarity on her face as she stared at the stumps of the guava trees with mute nostalgia till the door opened and her fathers grey eyes met hers. And she knew then she shouldnt have come, shouldnt have returned at all; and her father knew she hadnt come, hadnt really returned at all. And when she painted her father later, it was like that, it was piercing and grey and halfblind, it was like an event that hadnt occurred.