Sitting for Someone Who Won't Come

The afternoon he came, the light fell at a slant.

I asked him to sit. He never quite sat down inside the painting — shoulders twisted toward the door, one hand resting on his knee, as if ready to leave at any second.

I painted seven versions. In each one, he came apart a little more. By the seventh, I stopped trying to put him back together.

Abstraction isn't painting a person into chaos. It is keeping the gesture they never put into words — even after it has stopped looking human.

AI can generate a thousand "seated men."
But it doesn't know —
who this one is waiting for.