A Shell's Secret

In the deepest corner of a shell, no true black paint can devise its darkness. For the artist, Payne’s gray is near to the depth, where a bluish-gray fold bends and twists in the void of light. This home is where the animal forms her shell armor, excreting sand granules slowly and methodically from a tighter place, a pocket, a crevice, a junction of life where protection began. Using just a pinpoint of blue and Payne’s gray proves that the ocean left its one darkest, drop inside. The hard shell reveals a surface of undulating curves coming out of the penumbra, whipping upward, and wrapping back around to its tip. The body of this univalve is a cone of purity, no holes, though it has been empty for some time, leaving a hollow home abandoned by a creature long ago. The only entity that resides in that deep crevice, where the painter reaches for the right shade, is that singular spot of gray-blue, blackness the ocean secretly left behind.