A banquet that has outlived its guests. The cutlery waits in strict alignment, as if obedience could conjure appetite. From each plate a soft eruption of color rises, the meal’s ghost, rehearsing pleasure without touching the tongue. The glasses gleam with a politeness that never spills. The cloth shines like a hospital sheet for desires that refuse to die.
Feasts are promises; this one is only the promise. The spectrum performs warmth while the room cools. Light does the eating. We are spared the clumsiness of hunger, the risk of conversation. Nothing stains. Nothing breaks. Everything glows at the temperature of remembrance.
Perhaps the guests arrived already, bodies replaced by gradients, voices pressed into glass. Or perhaps we reserved a place for our absence and sent the colors in our stead. The more the table dazzles, the more it confesses that nothing is happening.
Yet it is beautiful, this kindness of appearances. A mercy staged for a world too tired to taste. Look long enough and you will feel full. Leave, and you will be hungry in a new, irrefutable way. When we return, the flares will still be rising, patient, immaculate, performing the tenderness we no longer risk.
