[ WP ] Write about a museum guard who touches the art

Hundreds of people pass by her every day. They stand in great gelatinous blobs, moving and breathing as a single organism to gaze at her through their thousand-dollar telephoto lenses, then go to the gift shop and buy her likeness on mugs and mousepads. 
 
 `` I saw the Mona Lisa!'' they crow on Facebook. They Instagram her image, with a vintage filter, then buy a pain au chocolat. They sip their espresso and talk about how transcendent the experience was, how everyone should stand before her and bask in her enigmatic gaze. They elbow through the crowds on their way to La Tour Eiffel, where they buy their cheap trinkets, these shallow tourists. 
 
 But I have waked alongside her, the eternal silent creature, for many nights, under the low hum of the security lights. Together we keep our watch over the galleries and corridors. She shines quietly in the pool of reflected light that spills in front of her, she gazes as she has always gazed. The teeming mass can not understand her as I understand her. They do not contemplate; they commit acts of drive-by art consumption, then rush off to see the *Madonna of the Rocks* to see if Dan Brown described it right. I despise that fool. 
 
 But in the night, when the galleries lie in semi-darkness, I am alone with the *Joconde*. The daytime groupies who see the world through the cameras of their smartphones do not stop to ask why she looks so, what days she has seen, what has made her wistful and knowing. Their failure is in their rush; there is no depth or knowledge in their viewing. 
 
 But I know. 
 
 In the dimness she whispers her secrets for my ears to hear, and tells me of the land where she was made. The hand that painted her was gentle and wise, and the knowledge that was imparted by it is for all the ages. She whispers to me her love of him that breathed mystery into her. It was not only in his art that he loved her, and laid her bare, and knew her. Her face speaks her secrets to those who listen, but these days I am the only one who has ears to hear. When I stroke her oaken cheek, I know that she understands me, and I her. Once I was privy to such a mystery; once I loved as she has loved. Once my soul was laid on to the pristine stretch of a canvas and I was made both old and new by it. 
 
 Once, I, too, knew a painter.
