Mosaic

You look under the low tent sheltering from the sun, the compromise in showing them, the best way to protect the color is to keep them covered, as if under the surface of the dry, sandy dirt as they were before excavation. The pigmented stones, none of them larger than a tooth, and the picture coming into view, someone’s home almost two thousand years ago. This mosaic a floor, a main entryway to receive visitors and to impress with the decorative edge’s finish, a twisting helix of infinity. At the corners, boars midleap in pursuit of grapes. The deer in the center who’ve looked up, their sudden alarm, the twin strain of their necks. What about their alertness puts you on guard, reminds you how appearances can darken a threshold? The reassembly of how you see, are seen in each new country when traveling. Was that a body’s shifting stance? What was whispered upon entering? Was that curiosity or a gaze hardening?

Read more from Issue 20.1.