A Rainy Afternoon on the Cardiac Floor.

My granddad taught me how to paint with oils and badger hair brushes and a pallet-knife. He tutored me in the basement of his house after my grandma passed away, her heart up and leaving one rainy afternoon on the cardiac floor. The way the story was told to me you’d have thought her heart simply called it quits, decamped and headed for a less congested chest. My granddad fixed the broken lawnmower I found in the garbage when I was sixteen, caulking and greasing up the creaky bits and putting a new pull-cord on it fashioned from a piece of old clothesline. I remember my ma always fearful that he’d topple off the roof, the place he went when the eaves were clogged with wet leaves or the TV antennae was on the fritz, which meant it was pointing in the wrong direction. I painted two pictures, one of a cypress tree in an orangey red sunset, and the other, well I don’t remember what it was, or how come I forget what it was. I took the skills he taught me home to my bedroom over the garage, the bedroom that had the window opening up onto the basketball rim, the insufferably noisy bedroom, my bedroom. There I painted a hippie stoned on grass, his eyes all screwy, his hair a bird’s nest of green and olive green, dark forest green and almost forest green. I think my mom and dad have it somewhere, hidden out of sight or wrapped in packing paper.