“Seriously, Laleh, what are you looking for?” asked Zara with annoyance fumed into her voice.

“Art,” Laleh replied. She saw Zara’s eyeballs swing with a rollercoaster of lethargy, but she couldn’t blame her. Her thoughts could be lethargic for those who didn’t have her brain; even her brain got tired of them sometimes.

“I’m asking about in a partner. The person you spend the rest of your life with.”

“I want to spend the rest of my life with art,” Laleh said.

Zara’s head fell onto the table. “Like marrying an artist?” Her voice seeped through her hands covering her face.

“No, the art.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Everything is absurd.” Laleh turned away to look out the window.

“Art is meant for galleries. To be hung on walls. Looked at and admired from a distance before you move on,” Zara replied, making Laleh look back at her, deep into her eyes, wondering why her thoughts lacked the depth her eyes held.

“Art is not just paintings,” Laleh hissed.

“Come out of your head and look around. Everyone’s settling down. Find someone and hold onto them. No songs last forever. Books are surreal not meant for reality, you read and forget. Poems? No one even understands them anymore. Movies are just for the cinemas. You have a nice two hours dwelling into some fantasy and it’s over.”

Zara is cut off by the phone ringing. She gets up to take the call and Laleh turns back to the world outside the window, which had always been kinder. Whenever her thoughts grew too loud, she’d look out that same window to a familiar figure sitting on a chair in the garden, their legs folded together, as he read the newspaper. A galaxy of dreams shone through his brown eyes, beneath brows clouded with the lines of a long lived life. A faint pink glistened through his skin falling down to his lips. Hair set into a smooth dome, starting from the right falling all the way to the left on his forehead, faded into a shiny grey next to the ears like party buntings on a wall. So many shapes, lines, and colors clung to his face. He was a piece of art, like those works in Kandinsky’s eyes, beautiful in their own bizarre way. Making you fall in love with their colors before you even learned their name.

If art was meant to be looked at for a while before moving on, why can’t there be another Mona Lisa? There are a plethora of girls wearing pearl earrings, but there’s only one Girl with a Pearl Earring. Truth is that people leave. If not all, then most. Art stays, even if it’s hanging on a wall in an empty hallway. Encompassing a whole other world in between, there’s a life within its borders. A life with the lifeless, a life that even the living lacked.

Laleh saw something in those hickory eyes scanning the newspaper on the other side of the window. The shine in his eyes wasn’t just there, you could feel that in his presence. He was where the roses bloomed. It was like he lived in a different world, away from the norm. A world where the sun never set and the moon never left. The sky smiled down at him and sang songs no one ever knew as he twirled his way through its different hues, just like in those paintings people saw and then walked away.

The blue cable knit sweater he wore glistened under the sunlight, making her think of how he made even the blues seem blissful, like in Edward Barton’s songs. Going solo on a journey with no specific destination in mind. He kept hustling, kept running. The galaxy in his eyes grew with every step he took. More depth. More color. More gleam. One could stare at those glowing orbs and drift off in a dream. A dream of a world that was somewhere unseen. Somewhere far away, where the cold breeze met you with warm hugs, and the sun blew you kisses. Where barren lands grew gardens, the quiet was musical, and the motionless twirled. Finding lost travelers, helping them find a way. His voice was like honey, his words so warm. Laleh saw the cats come and sit by his side, his company comforting like a hot cup of tea on a cold, foggy morning. Surreal, like something you read about in books, not meant for reality.

He then put the paper down to grab a book. His glasses made their way back to the middle of his nose as his brows knit together. Laleh wondered if he knew he belonged in the books, the ones that made people laugh, cry, then laugh again. The books that made people fall in love with the little things, from how raindrops feel when they hit your skin to cold grass tickling your bare feet. He made you want to read him. The first few pages are so intriguing, luring the person to read the whole book. So many chapters, a surfeit of stories. Some words said, some unsaid. Some conversations heard, some unheard. This character was hard to forget, unlearn.

The book he held was called Poems from the East, and she wondered how he himself was the poem that didn't rhyme. A stanza misunderstood. He left a mark wherever he went. He was that song that just stuck with you. Two minutes made you feel something new. Every time, the melody was the same, but the way he made you dance with him changed. He was the song that lasted forever.

One could feel him in art galleries, fulfilling and wholesome even if the only existence in that space was him. He made staring at empty walls fun. He saw colors there, too. Yellow, blue, green, red. It’s never out there, he always said. Then he’d point to his eyes and you could literally see a pallet. He shined loud and bright, like the yellow from van Gogh’s Starry Night. He glowed pretty and bright like the lilies from Monet’s gallery, the experience might be short like Beethoven’s nine symphonies but it stayed with you, sometimes as a memory, sometimes as a feeling.

That was art.

He was art.

Laleh’s chain of thought about the man broke when she heard Zara’s voice again. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“You kept looking outside and were zoned out.”

“I found art.”

“Art? I don’t see any art there,” said Zara, while staring out the window, lost.

“Now that I’ve basked under its splendor, I know it exists,” she said softly.

Zara frowned. “What exists?”

“Art,” Laleh whispered. “The kind that doesn’t hang on walls.” She turned back to the window. The silver in his hair and the gold on his skin beamed under the sun, and she smiled at her Aba on the other side of the glass, still lost in his world of words and wonder. “So, I’ll try finding that,” she said quietly. “It might be a whole new book, or a painting, or maybe even a symphony, but art, nonetheless.”

And in that moment, Laleh finally understood what Zara never could. Art wasn’t meant to be admired and left behind. It was mean to live in the moments you could never frame.