Through the searching eyes of Mona Lisa is an attempt at seeing, watching from the perspective of the observed, in this case a portrait in the Louvre. A story.

She was used to the crowd by now. The way it trickled in the morning, growing exponentially in the blink of an eye like the leaves of a vineyard in spring. For although they acted as individuals, they reacted as a whole in the large room that housed her. She had watched them so many days, the visitors, she had lost count. Of the passing time, of their number.

A leaf may flutter in the wind, but all leaves twist under its tease, and turn as one to follow the sun. And like the vineyards of Cesena, and of Florence, the crowd would change appearance, its impetuosity diminish, and wither by night time, but would still move as one around the room. Bound by visiting rules.

But the vineyard grows in strengths by tendrils holding tight even in the death of winter. They, the crowd, would hold only onto their cameras. Even in death, she asked herself.

Yet with each day’s crowd she was, still, expecting him to return and go on with his job. She was waiting for him. Looking for his unmatched appearance. His wavy locks, that she’d later seen specked with silver, more often spotted with paint. His overflowing beard, the way he’d tuck it, but only with his left hand and, especially of late when he’d pause for thought. For she’d watched him too, like he’d watched her. She’d studied him, like he’d studied her.

His spirited, dark eyes that always locked and held, never allowing her to drop her gaze. Eyes that saw beyond the ordinary, the outer shell of things where ordinary people chose to cease seeing. Like them… Eyes that remembered before the mind did. She had studied his eyes, learning line after line, as they sprouted around. The way they twitched when he chose and mixed colors. The way they rose with the corner of his mouth. How their sparked, flanking his long, straight nose, the sign of the perfectionist he was.

She was searching for their unmatching magnetism within each daily swarm. For their kindness.

She was searching for his bright tunic and hose that only a man with his grace of movement and force of spirit would attempt to wear. For his easel and his artist satchel, the one that held his miraculous silk brushes.

She was searching for his exuberance, his generosity, for the way he would move through a crowd as an individual, as that one leaf of the vineyard that would follow the sun out of her own accord, for the sun itself came out looking for her.

In all the world there wasn’t another like him. For her. For he was her creator. He was Leonardo da Vinci.

And she was waiting for him to finish his work.