Written in Kampot, February 2024. Typed up today.
The hull was blue when I arrived. Not a chosen blue, the kind that comes from mixing whatever was left of other tins.
Kampot was hot that month. I had a room above a hardware shop, and the river went brown in the afternoons. The boat sat on the mud at the bank, and I could see it from my window.
The first coat went on while I was still settling in. The man used a brush meant for walls, not wood. He didn’t sand anything. Just painted over what was already there. Within days the blue was bubbling where the sun hit longest.
Later he started again. Green this time, brighter than anything else along that stretch of river. He worked with his back to the road. I’d already spent enough evenings sitting through the power cuts in Kampot that watching someone paint badly felt familiar. He’d stop mid-stroke and walk off, come back later. The green covered the blue in patches and from my room it looked like a bruise.
Then red. He didn’t take the green off or the blue off. Painted straight on top.
By then the hull showed all the colours at once, each one cracking where it met the next. He sat on the hull eating rice from a bag, looking at the river. I think he was satisfied. Or maybe he’d stopped caring which one it was.
I forgot to take a photo of any of them. The boat never went in the water. I kept checking from the window each morning but it stayed on the mud the whole time I was there.
That’s all I wrote down.
