The Artist

As I read the book that clipped to its leaves once bore a metal winged entity, memory sets in. 

By recalling pasts that do not belong to me, I can only imagine stories told and assumptions made. 

Cold evenings dashed with stars and stricken by creative recklessness seem to nudge at me as I sit here deep among the licorice. 

Did she hear the voices of the party-goers as they underwent emotional combustion? 

Even as she crawled into bed, did she recognize the betrayals passing from one lowered glance to the next?

Fractured within, she eased the transparent door shut against the harsh words of moments passed, and wondered if this sour dream she awoke to at times was an actual entity, or merely hallucination waiting at the wrong station. 

Gushing out of her heart were all of the hopes she as a rule lashed to a deeply embedded post, for to please others in need petted her conscience far sweeter than a stroll through the garden. 

Heaving with dry dismay, her imagination imploded as the leeches bore down upon her, tasting the blood of resignation.

“I don’t even put up a fight”, she assured herself as she handed over her favorite doll to a beggar man. 

Just to feel alive, she had to give herself away, even as beyond her foggy detection, waves of remorse battered her shores. 

“Keep yourself humble”, she remembered being told; where had that advice led her other than into self-reproach. 

Like a small bird riding a mighty wind, she exerted herself to fly above life’s troubles. 

Migratory flocks advanced into her path like reckless storms, but she smoothed them into smiles without missing a single cue. 

“Nothing beats a good meal”, she always said, and fed the world one artist at a time.

Of all the strange sensations mingling in the crowd, one pretty ripple stood still and solemn, resisting the urge to pour over the edge for fear of the fall. 

Pounding against the rocks below, puddles and splashes caught the light and befriended her inspiration. 

Quests for realities’ illusions churned strangers into spreadable guests, and melted time into a buttery gold flirtation. 

Rounding the edges makes for a smoother ride and a kinder trip, and so she exhaled pumice to soften the blow. 

Such memories can be traced in the garden; branches broken through loving embrace, footprints in the mud from a curious child, or fruit trees leaning away from each other in eternal disagreement. 

Tipping away from her roots, she avoided confrontation.

Under the sun there is always light and shadow, and though she tried to hide her shadows from others, she could not conceal them from herself. 

Very thick with nectar, a swollen peach fell into her hot hand, and she squeezed the fruit tightly, experiencing passion.

"Where are my feet dancing, because somehow in the distance I hear them tapping?" she wondered. 

X marked the spot, for after the pleasures of the satiny skin and voluptuous flesh had long since slid down her throat, she held a round key, covered in a crisscross language, upon which she read directions for tomorrow, and like a seashell, the pit echoed syncopation of:

Yawning beneath velvet quilts and satin sheets, she giggled at the stars and whispered her secrets to them.

Zones of joy and dancing she drenched with color as she drifted off to meet the sunrise.

Jennifer Burnside