Painting

She painted.
The room breathed.
The light, the smells, the sounds of the inner city were inhaled through the open window and exhaled through her brush.
A crossing guard whistled -
Her paint-flecked arms raised and dipped.
Rich color plastered and smoothed onto the blank white surface.
The engine din sang - gas-guzzling clunker thundered the bass line,
Fuel-efficient hybrid half-pint threaded a post-modernist buzz through the melody
Sung in brave gusto by the middle-class sedan whose unassuming driver chimed in subtly discontented harmonies with his head and elbow against the window.
Each clef measured gloriously through the half rests and whole notes of her holistic artistry.
Pungency of garbage adorning the city sidewalks wafted on the summer breeze to that third story window.
Milk four days past its usefulness.
Diapers four days past their usefulness.
Cockroach cuisine and rodent delicacies.
Half-eaten hoagies.
Once-eaten oatmeal
(Revisited upon its consumer thanks to that milk - four days past its usefulness).
Cans - lined with remainders:
Ravioli juice, or low-sodium chicken noodle soup, or plain beef broth.
Each homogenized yet distinguishable aroma worked its way into the paint - perhaps to linger:
Perhaps to be immortalized in her work...
And that heavenly city light...
As she painted and the room breathed,
The afternoon sunlight radiated through the window,
Soaking with warmth, cheering the wearied movements, cleaning, renewing, resonating, inspiring, giving.
Night would welcome new light - electric, vibrant, city strobes:
To shelve the warmth of the workday and chores - those wearied movements - to stoke, to sway, to thrive, to live, to take, to break, and to restore.
That city sunlight - that city night-light - with their richly diverse spectra
Both merged and commingled in jitterbug daydreams.
As her paint-flecked arms rolled and rolled and rolled.
And dipped. And rolled and rolled and rolled.
...Let this coat dry.
One more coat of Gobi Desert on the kitchen walls and she could start on the bathroom walls.
Aquashell...