A picture that reminds me of a girl

I saw it hanging from the gritty bathroom wall of a Hackney Wick dive. It reminded me of this girl, you see, who was an artist who exhibited in Shoreditch once but really she worked in a fish bar close to Dalston Junction.

This picture, next to people snorting cocaine on the sink, and yeah the whole room smells like urine, too. The smell is background noise after a while. It’s got some string and a hook, and the wall it’s hanging from is plastered in graffiti tags. This girl could have painted it, because everything is connected, I think, so maybe there she is.

I couldn’t tell you if she had a drug problem or not. Her arms and legs got so thin, like antelope legs. The first time I saw her, she had those sharp features back then too, right across the bar with three drinks to herself, one after another. I got so drunk and stupid that I ran after her once she left and asked for her name, and when she told me, I wrote it down on my palm and squeezed my fists together when she wasn’t looking.

My head gets so fuzzy these days, but I did go to that bar a lot and sometimes she was there too. When we talked, she spoke about the price she sold her art for and the shapes of the frames she chose. Green, mostly, because the frame is part of the artwork and its colour has to say something about what’s in the painting.

I wrote her a note on a tissue once, and it said, It’s not how we act that defines who we are, it’s what we do with the things that hurt us. Then I fingered it apart and threw it in the urinal.

I’m old now. And I never saw her again, until this painting on the bathroom wall and she’s exactly the same age.