She was queen of the madrigal then,
When she traced a history of time and place on her palm.
Hair like thick red honey, its curled ends
Shone the airy bronze of barrier-island sand.
Her words trilled to music foreign to other ears;
She roamed the grounds to the tune of us calling her home.
That time she was a queen was too sweet to last.
She grew lovelorn and lost, and the honey turned to sour whiskey on her breath. “Where has the time gone?” she asked, not searching for time
But for stones to turn over in her sleep.
She slept like a boulder if she could slip
Away on a dram of old dreams and blessings that rolled off her master’s tongue.
One day she came looking for me,
Though it was another’s name she shaped
With her thick and venomous tongue.
She found in her hands a potter’s craft as delicate as a bird.
She held it with spindled fingers and watched as it slipped from her grasp
And became but a memory in sculptor’s muscle.
“Well then,” she said, her limbs curling into her body as if burning alive.
We squared our shoulders and turned to go.
She hummed with drink and very nearly drowned
To what would have been a languid death.
Her body quaked when she met fire that dripped tendrils of heaven onto her face And cloaked her in a robe of silky smoke, the stars dying to see her at first light.
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Spaine Stephens is a former journalist, current marketing and communications professional at East Carolina University, and aspiring writer of fiction and poetry. She hails from North Carolina.
For Franceine is a post from: Straylight Literary Magazine
