They meet in a corridor
that was originally painted as a background
and then got ideas.

Now the colors have invited bodies,
and the bodies have invited conversation,
and the conversation has forgotten
what it came here to say.

Four figures, more or less:

On the left,
a person made of lavender static,
bent forward like a question mark
that refuses to end.
Their outline twitches—
every brushstroke a micro-decision
between staying and leaving.

Next to them stands
a tall turquoise-shouldered narrator
who never actually narrates anything.
They lean in,
one arm extended,
hand hovering in mid air
as if they’re about to touch
either a shoulder or a hypothesis.

In the center,
the yellow-torso person:
three small buttons of temporary authority
lined down the chest.
They have the expression
of someone who just realized
they are the main character
and are not sure they applied for it.

On the right,
a figure of saturated blue and green,
hands deep in pockets,
carrying a casualness
that has been rehearsed for years.
They lean against the edge of the painting
like a door frame that decided
to grow a personality.

Between them the air is thick
with transparent sentences.
You can’t hear them,
but the brushstrokes remember.

Something like:

“So what do you do?”
“Well, it’s complicated.”
“Ah, then it must be important.”

Every time someone says “complicated,”
the painter adds another color
to the same cheek.
No wonder everyone glows
with patchwork emotion.

The floor is a soft red strip,
a backstage carpet
for ordinary drama.
Feet blur into it,
unsure whether they’re walking
or just being underlined.

No one here is fully finished.
Jawlines evaporate into turquoise mist,
hands dissolve into gesturing clouds,
legs taper off like forgotten arguments.

These are not portraits,
they are attempts.

Each figure is a version
of a sentence that trails off:

“I was just thinking—”
“It’s funny because—”
“Back when I was—”

The corridor itself leans diagonally,
as if reality were slightly intoxicated.
Green light slides down one wall,
blue light climbs up the other,
and somewhere in the middle
pink and orange negotiate a truce.

We are catching this group
in the liminal time-slot
between “arriving” and “having arrived.”

Coat still on,
bag still half held,
mind still switching tabs.

It might be the beginning of a party,
a university hallway after a talk,
the side of a conference room
where the real discussions hide.

Or maybe it’s the exit
from a family celebration,
right after someone said
something too honest
over dessert.

Whatever it is,
the painter knows
that most of social life
happens exactly here:
in the not-quite,
in the doorframe,
in the “So, anyway…”

Look at the faces.

They are all slightly misaligned,
features shifted by half a second.
Eyes attend to different timelines.
One mouth smiles in present tense,
another in polite past,
the third in subjunctive:
“I would be fine,
if things were different,
which they aren’t,
but never mind.”

The smallest figure,
down left,
is folded into the scene
like a footnote with legs.
They are listening to everything
and will remember nothing as words,
only as temperature:
the warm-purple sound of laughter,
the cold-green hum of being ignored.

Maybe this is a sociology diagram
of how roles crystallize.

The center body becomes “the one who speaks,”
the blue-green one “the silent comparator,”
the lavender cluster “the supporter,”
the small figure “the audience.”

But the colors resist these boxes.
They leak across outlines,
smuggling alternative moods
into every role:
shyness into authority,
uncertainty into nonchalance,
mischief into listening.

From somewhere just off canvas
comes the vague smell of coffee
and unfinished emails.

Someone is about to say goodbye
for the third time,
the goodbye that means
“I still need two more minutes
of feeling connected
before I can go back
to being a single person
scrolling their phone.”

A gust of unseen air
pushes the colors slightly sideways.
Faces flicker.
For a heartbeat
all four figures overlap,
becoming one many-armed person
endlessly gesturing,
constantly nodding,
permanently almost-understood.

Then they separate again,
each pulled back
into their assigned coordinates.

You might ask,
as you often do:
Where is the pig?
Is this a pigture or a picture?

Today it’s people-only on the surface,
but if you look closely
at the central figure’s shadow,
you’ll see a tiny pink smudge
curled at shoe level—
an invisible companion animal
of social awkwardness,
sniffing the floor
for dropped topics.

It grunts softly whenever
someone makes a polite laugh
instead of the real one.

You can’t hear it,
but the brushstrokes can.

Soon, the corridor will empty.
The group will disperse
into separate evenings:

one towards dishes,
one towards documents,
one towards a late tram,
one towards a digital battlefield
full of notifications.

The colors, however,
will stay here,
looping the scene again and again,
replaying the moment
where everyone was half present,
half elsewhere,
and yet somehow—
for a small, vibrating instant—
exactly together.

The painting holds that instant
like a breath
that never has to end.