Eden

Before Jacob knew her, he painted her in purple and blue. A royal jade purple. A blue deeper than sapphire. Bought at Michael’s and mixed by an acned child with braces. Still, it inherited the shine of a well-polished 10,000 years. The fabric was old. Found discarded behind a dumpster in town. He spent the spring building a wooden frame to support it. Come May, he wet it and fit it to the wood. He hadn’t begun yet and the painting was already finished. In some dim attic of his mind whistling with cobwebs. Already finished. Closing his eyes as his hands moved.

Every other painter he knew borrowed from past lovers. Collages of dead bodies. Paint-by-numbers of bleached photographs. He’d never seen anyone like her though. The canvas was enormous, too. Had seemed to grow as he painted. Nearly brushed the ceiling of his studio. No one had ever seen it and when (on the rare instance) other artists came by he would cover her up with a drop cloth. Stick her inconspicuously in the back, leaning against a wall of rotting pastorals and discarded buckets of paint. They asked him what he was working on and he said, “Postcards.” Pulling out an old shoebox full of paint scraps from before his wife died. After a bottle of wine they left and he rested in the silence. His secret fermented in his gut and weighted his legs. He smiled. No one knew she existed except him.

She was her best in the moonlight. He’d stare at her figure cross-legged on the dirty cement floor and hum something guttural. It was a language, he thought. Her language. Ancient. Like those caves in France. He felt he’d tapped into something.

Sometimes Jacob would dream of her. He would wake up finishing a sentence in a phantom conversation. His body coated in sweat. He would hobble to the kitchen for a drink of water and forget halfway there why he was walking.

In July, the air conditioner broke and his house was saturated with upstate New York humidity. The walls were slimy with sweat. Wrenching his brain dry. Thoughts existed outside of him and he walked into them accidentally. Like living in a whale, he thought, I’m Jonah. The air a thick cloth going down his throat. He walked out of the house just to be able to breathe comfortably. Inhaled deeply to dry out his lungs. The house was a sauna. Or, a dying whale, he thought. The temperature topped 100 degrees and his clothes fell off like autumn leaves. Coating his body in sunblock, he walked nude around the backyard in the late afternoon. Imagining she was with him. If you come, he thought, I will tell you a secret.

He finished her eyes the second week of August.

The moon was full last night. It clarified things, brought their definition into strict angles. The darkness felt piercing, like it might cut him if he touched the wrong part of it. His bedroom window looked out at the backyard. His studio glowed with lunar ambience and Jacob felt drawn to it. Stomach quivering. Not nausea but the precursor to it. Bedsheets clung to his skin when he climbed out of bed. His body still coated in sunblock. The white linen clung to him like an oversized toga. Smell of sunlight and his festering body odor permeating the bedroom. He wandered into the backyard and his feet quivered when they brushed through the wet grass. When he entered the studio, he saw the canvas leaning precariously against a large easel propped up against the wall, hovering above the concrete floor. A line of ants had snuck into the space. Crawled up the canvas. “No!” he yipped, running to straighten it and, for a moment, it seemed like something reached for him beneath it.

He secured the canvas against the wall and sighed. Watched the ants circling around her mouth. She smiled. Of course, he thought, she’s hungry. He hurriedly collected more of the creatures mulling about the studio. Gathered them like squirming grapes in his hands. Fed them to her. Eating some himself. The night, no longer sharp with anxiety, widened around him, included him in its body. Blue and purple. He stopped and stared at it. The memory of painting it escaped him. Who had done this?

The cave was damp and still.

Iridescent light from a distant opening in the rock glazed across the wet oil of rock.

A cenote.

The bottom of a well.

Her eyes gradually emerged from the darkness. He stared at her until she stared back. “Eve,” he said aloud. The first word he’d ever said. “Adam,” she replied. They, believing in each other, had no need for any other voices. Often, he wondered if he’d really painted her. Or, if he’d only come to believe this over time.

The cave did not speak. Offered no input.

At one point, he sat in front of her and accepted that he was the painting. That he only spoke through her voice.

BIO: Nick Hilbourn is around. He's an author and a teacher who writes essays, reviews, and poetry. He's around and would like you to learn more about his work at nickhilbournisaround.com or at his podcast on Spotify (Meditative Week of Poetry). He's also around at Blue Sky (@nhilbourn.bsky.social), X (@nhilbourn) and Instagram (@nhilbourn)