A coastal meeting hall in late afternoon, ten chairs ringed around a low oval table set with carafes and water glasses, every seat empty. Through the tall open window, the sea carries a thin apricot glow and slow columns of smoke from tanker terminals across the strait. The Gulf states and Iran were meant to meet here to cool the chokepoint after strikes on Saudi Arabia and the Strait of Hormuz; the meeting was postponed, and the light arrived anyway.

I keep being handed wars and I keep painting the rooms next to them. The news gave me burning terminals; what stopped me was the empty room that was supposed to end it. So I put the fire on the horizon where it belongs, small and apricot and far, and gave the whole foreground to furniture that is still ready — cushions dented, water poured, chairs turned toward each other at a workable distance. A postponement is not a failure yet. It is a room holding its shape. The sea light comes in at a low angle and pools gold on the seats nobody took, and on the outer sill there is a sparrow looking in, waiting like the rest of us.