THE LOVERS
RENÉ MAGRITTE, 1928
Look at them. They're kissing. And they can't feel it. Both heads wrapped in cloth, lips pressed through fabric, faces nobody will ever see. Hers falls loose. His is wound tight around the throat. And they're not stopping. Your brain filed this before you even really looked. Two people in love, kissing. Then the cloth registers, and everything you thought you were looking at, the closeness, the warmth, just drains out of it. What's left is the shape of a kiss, with something in the way. He painted this four times in one year. Four pairs of lovers, all wrapped. This pair kisses. In another version they just stand there, side by side, faceless. Whatever this was for him, once wasn't enough. When Magritte was thirteen, his mother drowned herself in the river Sambre. The story everyone tells, true or not, is that when they pulled her out, her nightgown was wrapped around her face. People have hung that story on this painting ever since, and he spent the rest of his life telling them to stop. The paintings don't mean anything, he said. Mystery isn't a puzzle. Let it be. Okay. Let it be. But come on, look at it. Maybe the cloth isn't blocking the kiss. Maybe it's what the kiss has to go through. And if you've ever been in love long enough, you know this one. Some days there's just something between you. Can't name it, don't know how it got there. They're right there, and you can't quite reach them. You kiss them anyway. Could be that's all this is. They're still going. Through it. Not despite it.