Flash Fiction
The first day was by accident. The young woman strolled the museum galleries, avoiding the spreadsheets back at her desk. Looking, but not seeing. Not bored, but unattached. Most people found it easy to connect to other human beings. This woman didn’t really have it in her. Things were mostly shades of gray. No interest in the outside world besides the small joys like the way her tongue buzzed from too much sugar. Then she turned a corner and found the painting, so large it seemed to take up the entire hall.
“Oh,” the woman said.
Her eyes were first drawn to the carved swirls in the mahogany frame. Then they moved to the painting’s various shades of blue. That’s all there was at first glance, blue in so many variations that it was difficult to perceive anything else. Eventually a figure emerged: a girl, in blue. The setting was a ballet studio, mirrors everywhere in lighter shades of blue. The floor swirled with darker shades.
“Blue,” she whispered.
The girl was in the middle of a relevé, on her tallest tiptoes, arms encircling her head. Her hair such a deep shade of blue, it looked black at certain angles. Her dress, a lighter blue.
“Who are you?” she asked.
She took the seat in front of the painting. She had never done that before. She had never really looked at the people in portraits. But this one was made of such a swirl of blues. The paint brush must have moved like a hurricane.
“Huh,” she said.
On the second day, the woman returned, even though the spreadsheets towered. She sat on the bench in front of the painting and named all the shades of blue she found—the colors of calm and trust. The mirrors in the ballet studio were pond blue, slightly reflective. The barres were a midnight blue. The wood floorboards were blue gray. The hair of the ballerina standing en pointe was charcoal blue. Her puffy tutu and leotard were soft pastel blue. Her eyes were ocean blue. Her skin was a blue so pale it was nearly white. Her lips were tinged blue.
“Who are you?” the woman asked again. She hoped for an answer.
By the thirtieth day, the woman had learned the painting, created in 1889, was called Ballerina in Blue.
“But that’s not your name,” she said. She was having tea, the only drink allowed in the museum. The cup was paper and blue. She felt a buzz of joy on her tongue, despite the lack of sugar.
“It must have been hard to have to practice so much, never being able to rest.” The woman tilted her head.
“You must have had such fun, though,” she said.
“I bet you would have liked smoothies.” The woman liked them and she felt like she and the ballerina could be the same.
“Your family must have been so supportive,” she said. It felt like an unanswered echo.
She sat in front of the portrait for the fiftieth day in a row.
“I bet you wore pretty dresses all the time,” the woman said.
“You know there’s a boy in a portrait nearby I bet you would have liked,” she said. “He was a librarian. The artist liked how he concentrated on his reading. And green goes well with blue.”
She added, “He looks good in glasses.”
The label next to the painting said Ballerina in Blue was a real person but didn’t give a name.
“The boy next-door has a name. That’s a little unfair,” she said.
The woman wore all blue that day: jeans, sweater, corduroy jacket. Hair pulled back with a blue scrunchie she found in her things.
On the hundredth day, the woman carried a book on art history and read the girl’s name out loud: Virginia.
“That’s your name,” she said. “The girl who posed for an artist and hid in the cracks of history. He has only three surviving works and you are the only one here.”
The woman revisited every blue that she had seen in those hundred days. She had grown attached to them. She measured her life in blues now. She painted her bedframe ocean blue and bought matching linens. She painted her apartment door a nice cobalt blue. Her new shoes matched the lapis lazuli blue on the ballerina’s slippers. Her life of spreadsheets behind her, she sat in front of the shades of blue and named them.
“You must have had everything you wanted,” the woman said as she took a sip of tea. The frozen image too beautiful for any other option. But not without effort. Sometimes beauty takes effort and determination.
Mirrors, pond blue. Barres, midnight blue. Floorboards, blue gray. Hair, charcoal blue. Tutu and leotard, pastel blue. Eyes, ocean blue. Skin, pale blue. Lips, tinged blue.
Daniela Flores-Rodriguez is a Latina writer based in Los Angeles. She works mostly in poetry and fiction. She hopes to write more interesting female characters to fill the startling lack of female perspective in literature. She’s been previously published in two Writegirl anthologies. She also is a teaching artist with ClayDD and enjoys working with art in support of mental health.