painted pine · removed · propped against skirting
it came down on its own one afternoon — the wire gave — and chipped at both diagonally opposite corners. the picture it held was undamaged, improbably, and was rehung in a walnut frame across the corridor. this frame has not been repaired or rehung.
it has been propped against the skirting for, possibly, four years. the patch on the wall where it used to live is paler than the rest; you can see the rectangle from across the room. the nail is still in the plaster, with a small length of picture-rail wire dangling from it.
no one has thrown it away. it is also not exactly being kept.
field-note the most precise outline of an object in this house is the wall behind where it used to hang.