Ekphrasis of Edvard Munch's Kiss by the Window

“Never trust the boys that say they love you.”

His sweeping proclamation falls on the ears of the coffee shop as it is winding down to close on a sleepy Thursday night. You see, I go to this coffee shop with my roommate to escape the constant slamming of doors through our paper-thin walls. That is, if you can call it a coffee shop. It’s really just a shitty chain, but I like their chocolate-covered espresso beans and the workers know my name.

So, one night, I was trying to read and a man with a fluffy grey beard that reminded me of my fathers yelled at me across the small, box-designed store: “What are y’all doing?”

“I’m reading a short story.”

“Well, what’s it about?”

“Love, probably.”

After a few more questions and stares, he gets up to leave. Gliding to the door, passing me, he waves with his wrists and speaks loudly (maybe too loudly) and says: “Never trust the boys that say they love you.”

And like that, he is gone. But he leaves behind this coffee cup. And it has that same shitty logo that every shitty chain has and there are so many like it sitting on street corners right now. I try to keep reading but I can’t stop thinking about this cup. How that cup is a piece of him, left behind, a mark that he was there, only to be erased by a minimum wage barista a few hours later.

And it’s like Edvard Munch’s Kiss by the Window. The lovers are stuck together, forever embalmed in his haphazard brushstrokes. Below, the passersby have no idea what is happening just above them, behind the windows. Each person goes on about their own lives, wrapped up in the intricacies of their own sufferings. Yet, just about them is a couple so absorbed that their faces blend into each other. These two could be anyone, and had it not been for the painting, they could have lived their entire lives and been forgotten in the end. But in this painting, they are immortal.

Forever an entanglement of black, blue, and yellow. Like the bruises on a child’s knee after a long day. Like watching the sunrise. Like that spot where the sand meets the ocean. Like the spot where the slamming door meets the door frame. Their blue and yellow could be anyone’s blue and yellow. Part of life is being okay with being erased.