Ekphrasis on The Painter's Daughters

They sit~ not as muses, but as morning light caught in linen~ one leaning gently into the other’s calm, as if sisterhood were a soft hush between breaths. The elder holds a silence far beyond her years, her fingers a quiet shield over the other’s fluttering world. She is stillness, composed, watchful~ a portrait of care before language names it. The younger rests wide-eyed, soul blooming, a child who doesn’t yet know what it means to be seen. In her gaze, a question, in her posture, a trust only the very young can wear. Their hair is a spiral of a notebook, loose thoughts escaping the brush, stories curling behind ears too small for the weight their father’s love will leave behind. He painted them not to capture, but to remember~ not daughters, but moments: the lean of a head, the hush of a room, the pause before childhood folds itself away.