Vermeer: Thief

Staying at a person’s house. Without the person present. Is what a thief does. A profession: to take without permission. To be

with no possession. A persimmon. Unbucks its astringent intention. Turning sweet. Like a peach. Perhaps it is a peach. Perhaps sweeter.

All fruits are the same desire. A gesture of lure. That the gone master uses. To bait guests. Here, the persimmon dangles. Like stiff breasts. Expression

without volition. To be touched. To induce milk for an absent child. I imagine a girl by the blue windowsill. Peeling persimmons.

The way she peels a slant of evening light. Or strokes the mane of a golden lion, coming over for the persimmon. It is all too late.

The peach is not a certain bait. The thief’s hand. A gesture of castaway. Taking away a thing. That is not there. Doesn’t make it stealing.

I imagine this girl, walking into the blueness. Imagine her. Till I become one of her imaginations. A skeleton dream to take apart.

To reconstruct. A city in blue. In the distance. Where buildings dance like an ever-departing sea. Ever returning. A sea so blue that could

be swallowed like a pill. In such blueness. Who is dreaming of me. Whisper: Child, I’ve stolen her gold to make out a city for us both.

But you’ve ruined it. Your extended absence allows this project unfinished. Your arrival brings the end. What’s left for imagination is what remains

forgotten. A thief took away the persimmon. What’s left is the light. The girl once peeled. The alloy of some unspeakable softness.