The gallery accepted it. And in return, it let me hang my own work: a mirror with no reflection, labeled simply:
I looked down. My palm had a cut I hadn’t noticed, a thin red line from a shattered wine glass I’d grabbed in my haste. A drop of blood fell onto the floorboards. Where it landed, a small canvas on an easel began to paint itself—a tiny, violent sunset, all vermilion and thorns. e hen gallery
“E. Hen Gallery. Admission: everything you almost said.” The gallery accepted it
“No one has ever seen the actual E. Hen,” whispered a man in a coat covered in paint splatters. He had no eyes—just two small, framed landscapes where his pupils should be. “Some say E. Hen is a collector who died a century ago. Others say it’s a condition. A kind of artistic melancholia where you only create what’s missing.” A drop of blood fell onto the floorboards