Lindsay squints. “This one looks like it fell off the wall and they decided not to fix it.”
I don’t answer immediately.
I study it the way I always have. The tension. The imbalance that refuses correction. The way the eye wants to interfere—and shouldn’t.
“Some things,” I say aloud, measured, certain, “are diminished by refinement.”
She turns toward me slowly.
“The impulse to fix them,” I continue, “usually says more about the fixer than the thing itself.”
Her mouth curves.
Not teasing. Not defiant.
Warm.
“So,” she says lightly, “you’re saying some things are better left exactly as they are.”
“Yes.”
She holds my gaze for a beat longer than necessary.
Then she gives me a small, deliberate wink.
“Good,” she says. “I was getting worried you’d try to polish me.”
I open my mouth—then close it. I have no idea how to respond to that.
Around us, the gallery hums on. Footsteps. Low voices. A camera shutter somewhere in the distance.
For a suspended moment, it’s just us. The art. The space between meaning and recognition.
I exhale once, controlled.
“I wouldn’t dare,” I say finally.
She smiles like she knows that isn’t entirely true.
And like she doesn’t mind anyway.
We move on together, leaving the piece exactly where it is—unexplained, unresolved, and unmistakably complete.
As we move deeper into the exhibit, my irritation dulls.
The way she looks at the art—unfiltered. Curious. The way she asks questions without worrying whether they sound informed enough.
She stops in front of a sculpture—abstract bronze, twisted metal that suggests motion without defining it. She tilts her head, studying it from different angles, then steps closer to read the placard.
"What do you think it means?" she asks.
"I don't," I reply honestly. "It's not my area."
She laughs once, surprised. "You don't have an opinion?"
"I have several. None of them educated."
That pulls another smile from her, softer this time. She looks back at the sculpture, considering. "I think it's about being stuck between two places. Not quite one thing. Not quite another."
