Fading into wallpaper on a Friday afternoon with the sweet serenade of evening traffic roaring, she stood listening to Billie Holliday sing about lynching and lost love. The awful truth of low-hung branches weighed down with bodies that swayed back and forth above approving eyes made her want to disappear further into the world of faded paper flowers and stripes. She zombie-wandered through passionless landscapes attempting impossible escapes, and failing. Orchards of odd fruit followed forcing her to succumb to the inevitability that suffering occurs, was occurring, had occurred and there was no eluding it.
But she had forgotten something, love existed in Billie’s melody and it was not completely lost, because it loomed, just over there behind the torn corner where the cobwebs blossomed like hands. Some lover man who called every woman “baby” and some god-blessed child wearing a torn petticoat smile-giggled, as they waited discovery.
After returning smile-for-smile to them, she floated on hand-painted bird wings to roam through royal climates without the limits of kings or pawns. Then the bird dipped down and she splashed through aquatic realms where one reality diffused into another. He was there. The one she loved. The one she had tried to escape by pushing herself away from him and his done with being a bachelor rose-colored promises. Her suspicion had ebbed enough to stand free of plaster fantasies. It was time to build something together and learn how to hope. She would take baby steps for now.
.JPG)
