day 35: Tri

A triptych is a work of art (usually a panel painting)
that is divided into three sections.
“I’ve seen this one,” I say.
“In person?” He asks.
“In person, yeah.”
The title is The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch 
and it was painted in 1490(ish)
“Can you believe his name is Hieronymus Bosch? Hieronymus Bosch. 
It sounds like something out of an Eva Ibbotson novel.
Dianna Wynn Jones. Well, maybe not her. Someone like-”
“Where did you see it?” He asks.
“I don’t remember,” I say.
“It can’t have been London. Maybe Italy? I only saw those cartoons in -”
“Madrid?” He asks.
“Madrid. Can’t have been. I’ve never been to Spain.”
“Then you haven’t seen it,” He says. “It’s been there since 1939.”
“Oh.”
He closes the Wikipedia tab.
“Hieronymus Bosch is a good name though. Want to go to a museum?”
“What, now?” It’s raining, although it’s always on the edge of rain in London.
It’s the only thing that feels like culture shock to me, in England.
Developing an understanding of the London rain.
I was told for years that it’s always raining, and I didn’t realize people mean it’s never raining.
Not really.
There’s mist and constant drizzle and always puddles and holes in my sneakers that lead to wet socks.
But never rain.
Once, there was a lightning storm and we sat on my bed half naked to watch it,
Electricity forking across the sky.
The glass doors out to the small patio created a triptych I liked
Window blinds, glass door with skyline, glass door with skyline.
I don’t want to leave my house today.
He doesn’t live here, he’s only visiting and can do whatever he likes.
“Yes, now.” I’ve almost forgotten what we’re talking about.
“Don’t you want to do things? I feel like we’re always just sitting around when we’re not at school.”
It didn’t used to be like that before I started dating you, I don’t say.
I used to go places all the time. Like the zoo and the opera and the late night museum openings where I did my fingerprints at a forensics table and left so much oily residue that the man running it told me never to commit a crime
Walks to Camden along the locks, never actually took a boat, or did I
Social dances where I spoke to more people in three hours than I would a full week of school and
“I’m tired,” I say. It’s both true and not true and some other third thing.
“Try being twenty-five sometime.”
Sometimes he thinks this is funny and sometimes he does not and sometimes he looks at me with some other thing in his eyes that forecasts the day he will leave me.
“I think I’m going to head out,” He says.
The few times I visit his house, I am shocked by the walk. 
Even if he never loved me or if he only thought he did or if he did, it’s a hike.
I think of him walking and me lying on my bed and school
​the point around which our obtuse points triangulate and think of how words have multiple meanings or one or none or-

1. of an angle more than 90 degrees and less than 180
2. annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand.
3. not sharp-pointed or sharp-edged; blunt.

I am all of these things, sprawled across my bed
no my cabbage flower patterned sofa in my London flat
that I share with two roomates I hardly see but resent 
Perhaps the feeling is mutual, I think, as lightning forks across the skyline in my memory
We three moved into a two-bedroom flat with a living room, after all.
Guess in which room I live.

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