Of course he has forgotten that he keeps me here. Chelikowsky has circumstantial dementia. That may or may not be true. What do I know? I am wedged now at the back of the drawer, behind three legal pads and a peppermint stick. Which is to say it is dark but smells good. I was not well cleaned the last time he used me, so there is a powdery pool of blue that grows ever more slightly each time he shoves something else into the drawer and I am banged up against the back. I feel nothing of course, but that doesn’t mean I’m not aware. Doesn’t mean that I don’t know, that I don’t remember. It is one thing not to feel. It is another thing not to remember. Abraham doesn’t remember. That much is undeniable. Once he used me every day. I lived in a hopeful coffee can with other brushes, some fatter, some finer. All of them are gone. I know he has purchased new ones and now paints again, but that is not what I am discussing here. After his last rejection, back in those old days, he threw them out the window and they hit a passerby who came straight upstairs and demanded a dollar for his trouble.
