A gift to throw away
This package had been left for her. She took it home and unwrapped it. She supposed this was meant to be a present to assuage her.
Wrapped Again, 2006, oil on canvas.
Martha Mayer Erlebacher, 1937-2013, American. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
She studied it. She turned it over. She set it down on a table. Handsome it was, wrapped and unwrapped.
She saw that this gift had nothing to do with her as an individual with a name, a father’s name, a face, a history, likes, loves.
No Face (Crown Heights), 2018, terracotta, graphite ink, salt-fired porcelain, and epoxy.
Simone Leigh, American born 1967. Baltimore Museum of Art
This, like her former lover’s other gifts, was an expression of his self-regard.
Such a handsome man. Wrapped and unwrapped.
Wrapped Again, 2006, oil on canvas.
Martha Mayer Erlebacher, 1937-2013, American. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
She wrapped it again.
Younger, she would have allowed it to work its way to a hiding place in her home.
But now she placed in the rubbish bin, wrapped again.
Sorry, she said to the package. Don’t be silly, she thought to herself: it isn’t sentient.
Although, she thought, are things sentient or not? Do things absorb sentience from their handling? What?
She had only two more thoughts about it: no hard edges, she thought. Watch out for your hard edges, she thought.
And are you getting too prickly? she wondered.
Thorn Head, 1945, gouache, chalk and ink on paper on board.
Graham Sutherland, 1903-1980, British. MOMA, NY
She rubbed her forearms firmly and then
Tea
when her hands felt warm and plump, she went to make herself a pot of tea. For comfort.
McVittie’s digestive biscuits, The Original.
Second only to chocolate McVittie’s digestive biscuits: the best
Tea with biscuits as in her childhood when every gift she received, wrapped or unwrapped,
was from an alert and generous love.