when he sees her, it's like an
epiphany, bright and sudden and
almost violent,
that leaves him overwhelmed and adrift
on his axis normally grounding him to
grisly normality
and the hollowness of his soul
is suddenly redundant and absurd
and he is absolutely sure of one thing;
that this is what it's like to live.
his fingers work frantically to
try and ignite his canvas with the beauty
and the elegance and innocence
and the temptation that radiates
so effortlessly off of her entire being,
every inch of her is as pristine and
alluring as the last and so
he scrambles to preserve this
ethereal creature so unlike
anyone he has ever known but his
efforts are futile and do not do her justice.
her skin is the porcelain china of the
blue vases his mother adored; her skin
shines and glimmers like jewels in the
sunlight, smooth and pure,
and her lips are the colour of the
rosaries wound tight around his fingers,
shackled 'round his wrists when he
kneels at the altar and prays to be
cleansed of his sins, and
her eyes are brighter than the sun
and its blinding flares and put
the shimmer of thousands of stars
to shame and glow a piercing glacial blue,
like silver lightning,
and he pauses his sketching for
a moment and realizes that
his hands have been trembling.
he works for what feels like eons,
carefully trying to transport the
exquisiteness in front of him onto the
paper in his hand, and there are
an infinite number of seconds where
his eyes do not falter from hers,
not even for a moment, and he takes
little note of how little she has draped
herself in, how the satin sheet
adorning her ivory shoulders leaves
so little to the imagination,
but forever doesn't last, and while he is far from ready, the muse rises and he
feels that rigid and familiar
hollowness begin to sink back
into the depths of his heart and his soul.
and when, after he has stashed away
his ink and his notebook and folded the
sketch of the ethereal woman into
his tunic, the muse approaches him in
a curious and timid manner with
a smile that leaves him breathless
and those silver eyes, he is certain
that she will simultaneously be
the death of him
and his first real glimpse at what
it's like to live.
INSPIRED BY MEDICI: MASTERS OF FLORENCE
