Edward Hopper. Rooms by the Sea, 1951.

The light is both lure and trap
sliding down wall to floor, an angled box 

opening to the door and blue water. A jumping off 
place, Hopper called it until friends noted the malignancy 

of the sea lapping at his threshold. In 1951, 
the metaphor beyond the open door, its knob left in shadow, 

is laughable now in its plausibility—a flood continues 
to cut the frame in the back, shadows sweeping 

the floor’s muted green, a chair’s red fabric.
Meanwhile, outside, the blue continues to swell.