“
The office of my daughter’s house is my new home. I sleep on something called a futon. I can sleep comfortably enough. When I wake up in the morning and the light is coming in the window, the painting that she made of koi fish in a pond looks like it is golden and shining. When I lie down on my futon bed in the afternoon or the evening, the gold and shine are gone. Sometimes something looks one way for a time and then becomes another thing. The fish are flat and orange, black and white. The painting doesn’t have anything to say. Above my futon is a crack in the ceiling, a big long crack. I lie here in the dark, but I can still see the crack. It frightens me because it means something is broken.
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Rebecca L. Brown (Flying at Night)