It's Still Life

Mukluks and the Colour Blue

He’s wearing his favourite slippers.
Mukluks, that’s what he calls them

because his aunt, who lived in
Greenland, called them that.

But, his mukluks have a Fair Isle
pattern. Not exactly Kalaallisut.

And he scuffs along the floor, so
he won’t stride straight out of them,

making a sh-sh sound that I just now
connected with a paintbrush, same

as when my dad would paint walls.
Or chairs. Up and down. Up. Down.

It’s a scuffing sound, the steady armed
strokes of my dad’s boar-hair paintbrush,

like when Dad painted Mum’s kitchen
chair, the one I sat on when I was young,

and Mum would cut my hair too short.
Hair in your eyes makes you blind, she’d say.

She snipped my earlobe once, and said
it was my fault because I twitched.

One day Dad painted that chair blue.
She hated blue. Blues. Feeling blue.

She repainted the kitchen chair. Red.
Mum had a defiant streak, but a year

after Dad passed away, Mum decided
to sell the house. She painted it blue.

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For Linda Hill’s JusJoJan “paintbrush “. AI Digital Art is mine and created using Midjourney’s bot (v4). Image and poem ©Misky 2023 Shared on Twitter #amwriting @midjourney @LindaGHill