The rain starts to fall an hour before I get to the museum. Not enough for me to have to unfurl the giant collapsible umbrella I have stashed away in my coat pocket, but enough for me to have to wipe my glasses off as I push through the entrance.

It’s close to empty when I go inside to pay for a ticket and ask the bored security guard where the abstract art gallery is.

He nods to the left at a set of stairs and grunts, “Third floor. First room on the right. Can’t miss it,” as if it takes a lot of energy for him to make any big movements. I can understand.

It’s not really like I came here to talk to anyone, though. I’m only here to look at one thing.

Do you remember the painting you had as your lock screen?

I think I’d asked about it before once, on our first date.

I tried to talk about my non-existent knowledge of Picasso and his blue period with the information I’d managed to retain from my five minutes in the bathroom with Wikipedia. You’d listened to me ramble for about three minutes before laughing. I guess I sounded ridiculous, but it worked, didn’t it?

Well, that’s why I’m here. Your phone is with your mom, now. Something about wanting to see the texts that you sent before it all happened. You’d have an aneurysm if you knew your phone and all its contents were being exposed to your mom. I can imagine you getting mad at me for letting her have it in the first place.

But the name of the painting was The Ocean, the artist someone called John Samuels. You lit up when you talked about it. You told me about how the artist told a story through the colors and how the little brushstrokes showed that he was really detail-oriented. You told me about color theory, lighting, and all this stuff I wouldn’t have known about had you not been there. I remember having fun trying to keep up with you and all the ideas that ran through your head at high speed. But sitting there across from you, hearing you tell me all about the art you loved, I felt bad.

I felt bad because I didn’t understand what you saw in it.

I’m not sure if it was the color, or the size, or the artist that made you love The Ocean so much more than the other pieces you talked about. I’m not sure what made you want it to be the thing you saw most often, the thing you talked about most often.

I want to know what made you look like that whenever you saw it.

I reach the top of the stairs, turn right, and there it is.

It’s a big painting, four feet across and seven feet tall. I feel myself shrink into my coat. The shoes I bought are already a half size too big, but they seem to grow bigger. I feel like I’m under a reverse magnifying glass. Like I’m a kid playing dress up with his dad’s clothing.

My eyes travel up and down the painting, taking in all the greens, blues, and yellows you’d told me about.

It’s here. Exactly as I remember it.

I blink hard once. A second time. I wait to feel inspired. To feel something other than the confusion that just can’t seem to leave me alone.

But as I look up, up at the swirls of blue and the dashes of green, I can only feel all the blood rush to my head and my chest start to tremble.

And for a dull, deafening second, there’s nothing.

I’m just standing here in front of a painting.

It’s almost funny, because I’ve been looking at it for five minutes waiting for something to happen. Some flash of inspiration that can let me in on whatever went on inside your head when you looked at it. Something that helped me know why it was special to you.

You always see it in those romance movies where the guy and the girl seem like they’re on the same wavelength all the time, like they have some unbreakable connection. Where they just intuitively understand each other and what they want. We’d always leave in the middle of those movies and sneak into another theater by the time you’d gotten bored of the plot. You always said they were unrealistic, asking me questions like, Did no one think it was weird how he just stood outside her window for an hour? or And he just happened to show up right before her plane left?

I watched them later on my own. Those couples just seemed to get each other.

You didn’t like those movies, did you?

I’m starting to hate them too.

I force my feet to move my body over to the bench in the middle of the room. Every step is heavy and my heart drops lower each time because it’s suspended on a string that could break if I move too fast.

I don’t really know what I was expecting. That I’d magically understand you? That I’d somehow be inspired and learn to “channel my emotions into painting”? I don’t want to do any of those things. What I want to do is rip up The Ocean into tiny, unidentifiable pieces and throw the pieces down a storm drain. Or tear The Ocean off the wall and take it home so I can just look at it. Maybe if I look hard enough, it’ll force me to create a story out of it. Give it some meaning.

I don’t know what I want to do.

I remember the time I came home from work and saw you sitting on the edge of the couch, crying. What’s wrong? I’d asked. You’d taken a while to respond. There was a book sitting in your lap, one of those big, leather bound ones with gold lettering on the cover. I remembered you’d saved up for that book for weeks. It was the first time I’d ever seen you open it.  

You pointed wordlessly to a painting in the book. A white canvas with so much gray and black slashed across it that only a little bit of the white cut through. I walked over to the couch and sat with you, feeling you push your head into the space between my neck and my shoulder. We stayed there for a long time. I watched you flip through the pages. At one point, a tear dropped down to a page of the book and stayed there illuminated against the backdrop of a painting colored with spots of red and orange. I remember thinking you were crying paint until you tugged your shirt up to your palm and rubbed the wet spot until it was almost gone and your sleeve came back without any color smeared on it.

The page is still wrinkled there. It didn’t go back to the way it was before, no matter how many times we’d tried to press it down back to normal.

I wish I’d asked you why you were crying, but the next morning, you were back to being yourself. It made me think I had imagined the whole thing. I’d had to open the book back to that page to convince myself that it actually happened.

It’s too late for me to talk to you now.

You were always so self-conscious, you know. Always telling me you looked bad in the mornings before you left for your job. Always showing me things you didn’t like about yourself. You were always beautiful. From the moment I saw you to the second we lowered you into the ground. I wish I’d told you every day. I still have the pink sweater you always used to wear. The one your mom knitted for you. It had so many holes in it and was threadbare at the shoulders, but I couldn’t throw it out. I wouldn’t let your mom have it either.

I wish I had talked to you more about things that you thought mattered.

You saw beauty in the paintings. You saw a story hidden somewhere underneath splashes of blue and yellow, and the emotion in every brushstroke.

I see shapes. I see lines. I don’t see anything human in those paintings.

But I remember you, and your smile, and your color, and I want to shred The Ocean apart until it yields some kind of truth.

I stare at The Ocean.

The Ocean stares back at me.

I exhale sharply and stand up from the bench.

It’s time for me to go.

Before I leave, I go to the museum store. Tacky, I know. I can hear you berating me from the little corner of my brain you seem to have rented out for good. It’s enough to make me laugh while paying for a little postcard with The Ocean printed on it. I don’t really care that the cashier gives me a weird look as I laugh, or that my hands shake when gathering up my change so that it spills over the metal counter and onto the floor.

As soon as I walk outside, a drop of rain lands in the middle of The Ocean. I back up into the entranceway of the museum and stare at it. I take my thumb and smear the water around, smudging the ink. The blue, green, and yellow mix together, and the whole center turns into a muddled gray.

I hold it so it’s angled towards the ground and watch the colored water slip off the postcard, fall to the pavement, and blend in with the rain.

I’m here.

You’re dead.

And I still don’t understand.