This is not a still life.
This is an early-morning argument between shapes.

The yellow jug clears its polygonal throat.
It has handles like conspiracy theories,
going nowhere in particular but very certain about it.
Out of its mouth explode branches,
hard-edged, turquoise, decisive,
like exclamation marks that refused to learn grammar.

The background is a riot of late-night decisions:
magenta that never went home,
violet that forgot why it was sad,
orange that pretends to be sunrise
even though the day has already passed it by twice.

On the table:
two slices of cheese that escaped from Euclid,
each pierced by round pink holes,
perfect portals for missing thoughts.
If you peer through them you see yesterday,
wearing slippers, eating jam straight from the jar.

Beside the cheese sits a bowl of circular rumors.
They call themselves “fruit,”
but I’ve heard them whisper in bubble colors—
blue, red, lilac, almost-berry, post-grape—
plotting a coup against reality.
Every time someone says “still life,”
one of them quietly rolls one millimeter to the left,
just to prove the term wrong.

The jug is jealous.
It was promised flowers,
nice respectable petals,
perhaps an art-historical reference or two.
Instead it got these angular twigs,
branches that look like city maps
of towns that never existed,
roads to nowhere,
dead ends with good coffee.

“Listen,” says the cheese,
“we all wanted other careers.
I studied astrophysics,
but destiny sliced me into snacks.”

The branches rattle in chlorophyll laughter.
They never studied anything;
they grew sideways on purpose,
just to annoy the concept of “vertical.”

From somewhere behind the purple wall
a voice announces:
“Today’s theme is domesticated chaos.
Please arrange your anxieties in color order.”

So the picture obliges.

Pink circles for all the jokes you didn’t tell.
Yellow planes for the days that went surprisingly well.
Blue dots for undelivered letters.
Green stripes for the arguments you won
but didn’t enjoy winning.

The jug collects them silently,
filling itself with small human leftovers
until its outline hums like a neon nostalgia sign.

A fork tries to enter the scene,
but there is no space for cutlery in this democracy.
Only bold lines may cross the border.
Everything else needs a visa from the painter.

The fork sulks offstage and writes a manifesto:
“We, the underrepresented utensils,
declare that abstraction has gone too far.
We demand recognisable jobs:
stirring, stabbing, lifting.
Down with non-functional aesthetics!”

Nobody reads it.
The bowl of fruit is busy rehearsing
for their big performance as planets.
They practice orbiting each other in imagination,
bumping, apologising, bumping again,
inventing tiny elliptical romances.

Meanwhile, under the table
(where the crayons gossip),
a crumb of lost perspective sighs:
“I used to know which way the light came from.
Now everything glows at once.”

The crumb is right.
This is a room without shadows.
Even doubt has been colored in.
Linear time took one look
at the hot pink tablecloth
and decided to take the day off.

In its absence,
breakfast and midnight snack occur simultaneously.
The jug pours nothing into no cups.
The cheese dreams of being the moon.
The branches reach for an invisible ceiling
and end up touching your thoughts instead.

You, the viewer, are late to the party
but early to the paradox.
You ask, politely,
“What is this supposed to be?”

The answer arrives
as a multiple-choice question:

A) A family portrait of shapes who left realism.
B) An archaeological site from the future,
where they excavate our colors
but forget our names.
C) A synesthetic recipe for how it feels
when joy and exhaustion sit at the same table.
D) All of the above, and also none.

The yellow jug shrugs with both handles.
Interpretation is your job, it says.
I’m busy existing in thick black lines,
holding together a bouquet of broken directions.

Out of pure mischief,
one branch suddenly decides to be a sentence:
“I once was a tree,” it claims,
“but the forest outsourced me to modern art.”

Another branch replies,
“I was never a tree;
I’m just an unfinished question mark
that grew bones.”

The bowl of fruit applauds in circular fashion.
Every clap is a quiet thump against the rim of the world.

At this exact moment,
the background colors—violet, orange, fuchsia—
form a temporary union.
They pass a resolution that states:

From now on, every ordinary kitchen table
shall be granted at least one impossible morning,
during which objects can refuse their functions
and simply shine in unreasonable combinations.

The resolution is unanimous.
Even the cheese agrees,
though it worries about what the fridge will say.

Finally, the picture takes a deep breath.
Lines thicken, colors settle into their scandal.
Nothing moves,
yet everything vibrates with unperformed actions.

Someone offscreen asks:
“Is this a picture or a dream?”

And the jug,
overflowing with angular maybe-branches,
answers without moving its jagged lips:

“This is a breakfast of maybe.
Take a bite,
and see which shape you turn into.”