The Dress

The Dress

The colours in this portrait are in sharp contrast, bumping up against each other, cold and bold

The kitchen window frames my single silhouette in this scene, the pose rigid and frigid

How am I feeling?  Relief – a decision was made. Mixing it up are the odd skips of my heart.

Outside on the street a large, black garbage bag slumps on the sidewalk

In the snow.

It looks a bit like Jabba the Hut in his curbside garbage day kingdom or maybe it’s Absolem, that hookah-smoking caterpillar pointing the way ahead.

I can see their puffed lips and sinister smile appearing in the folds of the bag as it settles into place, the twist tie wrenching it all up into a curved head.

Inside the black bag is a white dress,

All satin, lace and crusted pearls.

Briefly my mind wanders – What is a crusted pearl?

The dithering about what to do with the dress is finally over,

For years, ironically in retrospect, it was bagged up in a dark corner of the closet.

It is tainted, the lustre is long gone from the silky, smooth satin.

The waxy scent of a candlelit night many years ago snuffed out by reality.

I hear the garbage truck’s giant jaw grinding somewhere nearby, chewing up the rubbish from my neighbour’s weekly life

Then the gears shift as it gets closer, the motor is sluggish and then surges, lumbering along, slowly heaving its way down the street

The phone starts chirping off in another room.

Later when I look out the window

There is nothing left on the sidewalk but a wet, black, bare patch surrounded by a little mound of white flakey snow. The kingdom has been abandoned.

Feeling far less rigid and cold – I wonder-

If deceit were a colour then what would it be?