The Bimbo in Limbo

Seams

Band of Gold - Freda Payne; Leather and Lace - Stevie Nicks and Don Henley

Poems in this chapter are by Anne Sexton and e.e. cummings.

Jude felt the need to clean his refrigerator. Bothered by the amount of possible waste, she crafted a large pot of soup. Set it to cooking that afternoon. For the duration of the day, they were quiet. Their earlier conflagration had been more than enough to dull their tongues. In fact it had quite exhausted Timothy. He found himself dozing on the couch while a documentary about flamingos provided some distraction.

Loud screeching - flamingo mating cries - woke him suddenly. He blinked, and caught Jude staring at him quite openly. It seemed she had been for some time. "Sorry," he murmured. "I don't usually -"

"Yar as handsome as you always were."

He swallowed. Neither smiled. "I have not changed, I believe."

"Hm." Her stare didn't falter.

"You have changed." He said quietly. She raised a brow. "Perhaps I simply took it for granted but...I think you are more beautiful now than I can recall."

She shrugged, finally looking back to the television. "Guess death becomes me." He looked back to the program, as well. "Does anything come on yar TV that doesn't involve exotic animals?" Jude asked.

"I don't think so." He scowled. "But I haven't actually changed the channel."

"Oh."

Her hair had dried naturally into a thick mane. She brushed it while flamingos paraded. Plaited the strands into loose braids which she tucked into each other somehow. To Timothy, her hair manipulations were far more fascinating than the flamingos. He wondered how she tolerated his staring, then remembered how many men ogled her on a nightly basis.

"Mind if I pick through yar books?"

"Not at all." She rifled in the stack on the coffee table. "Mostly poetry, I'm afraid."

"It's been a long time since I read poetry." She settled on the Anne Sexton. He gestured for the e.e. Cummings, and they read in contented silence.

Until: "Listen to this." Jude cleared her throat and read.

"Come, my beloved,

consider the lilies.

We are of little faith.

We talk too much.

Put your mouthful of words away

and come with me to watch

the lilies open in such a field,

growing there like yachts,

slowly steering their petals

without nurses or clocks.

Let us consider the view:

a house where white clouds

decorate the muddy halls.

Oh, put away your good words

and your bad words. Spit out

your words like stones!

Come here! Come here!

Come eat my pleasant fruits."

She chuckled, turning the page. "Eat my pleasant fruits," she repeated.

He smiled. "I've got even better." He read.

"the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church's protestant blessings
daughters, unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow,both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things-
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
....the Cambridge ladies do not care,above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy