Beauty

  “Like an enraged poet she stared beautifully at the sheets clutched in her tender finders. She poised the letters upon the top of her elegantly crossed legs. She was clothed in fine silk fabrics that rested on her skin like the skin on a snake. Pressing the toe of one foot into the heel of her other, the woman teasingly moved the touch about through her white boots. Her white dress hung beside her on the cushioned seat to rest on the dirty floor; though it was apparent that no filth could stain even the whitest of her materials. Her pale skin was smooth and welcoming to all eyes, and accentuated the straight black hair running from her head. That hair; like a framework to the masterpiece that was her gorgeous face. Darkly shadowed eyes focused madly on the love letters she held, and in her opposite hand she grasped a long fluffy feather pen. She rested the pen between index finger and thumb, but held the tip of her finger in the bite of her teeth.
   So transfixed was this woman at the manuscript for her dearest love, that she was oblivious to the fact that the ink of the pen was dripping from the device onto her supple breasts and opposing wrist. The ink was a dark red, and like the knife she had cut herself with, the blood grasped the attention of whatever eye gazed upon her beauty. Beside her on the seat lay the roses from her lover, but they had long since died, but fresh blood continued to spill from the centre of those pedals. The blood stained the seat cushion, but the woman took no notice. Her eyes stared unaware at the white sheets of paper before her.
   I love her dearly; the woman in this painting. Often do wonder the words on those pages that do not face my eyes but her own. Are there any words at all? And if she were real, if she could exist in my life, would she write those letters to me? Would she write them, content and entranced about my soul? Her and I?”
   Such is the torment of this design, a world alongside an iron gate of deception and humiliation. To know such passion for another and yet realize the failure of impossible double consciousness. Love is cruel if unrequited, and yet I can name no cruelty in her stance, in her eyes that know not how to look. She has never been real, and I cannot be the one to construct her authenticity, for I myself, have never breathed a breath truly, but remain here with her. Apart. Love has victimized us both, and yet I embrace this eternal “torture” poets sorrow over. Imperfect lovers, extending in hands with gentle eyes a perfect union of ignorance that in so exists the possibility for greater understanding how one can consume the entirety of another.

-Sincerely;
The Painting Across the Gallery