Still Life

The small bowl is half empty. Water weeds jut from the surface. A single fish rests on an angle, his tail whiskering the disk of sand on the bottom, his world slowly evaporating, the pulse of his gills as slight as the two fingers of a sleepwalker testing the ripeness of an avocado. Across the room, the receptionist sits behind the broad maroon pout of her lipstick, by a green vase from which silk flowers jut, accumulating dust. She studies her nails, rasps them tentatively with a worn emery board. Afternoon waning, light drains slowly into the outflow of evening.