The Muse
“...just as, for all
practical purposes, there are no more readers of poetry.” - Flannery O’Connor “I’m moving from the
inertia of something started long ago.” - Scott Gallaway When I find her, her eyes are the color of rotting
apples, her clothes smell of urine
and stinkweed, and her hair, a brown field
on the brink of turning to dust. She crouches in a shadowed doorway, the
bar’s neon beacon flashing off her eyes.
I hold out my hand and she accepts it like a
child taking a gift from a someone
she despises. At home, she showers and I
make coffee. I feel on the verge of
something important like a thick lather of soapy
water streaming from a stained
chin. As she steps from the water, her bare skin shines, a ripe
peach dappled with rain. When I look up, I’m alone, eyeing the steamed
mirror, the moist fern next to the
sink. Then she glimpses me, sealed
within a droplet of water dangling from one wet breast. My eyes are open when she pats herself dry. Originally published in The Comstock Review |
