Musaic

Tragedy hangs upon her,
a heavy burden,  a winter coat
wrapped tightly around hunched shoulders
offering no comfort, warmth or solace.

Pencil-thin sincerity
smooth as a lawyer’s smile
has leached from her pores
to leave a parched desiccated shell,
its tuneless cadence spilling
raucously from her blistered lips,
flat reassurances croak
with the anger of my slapped cheek.

But she is beautiful, an avant-garde
mistress of indecision,
a dresser who, 
deliberates, deliberately
holding up clothes to mix and match
perfect machine-cut options, to adorn
a magnetic cardboard mannequin,
her beauty a timeless silver sheen
translucent as chalk drawings
held to the light.

I’ll carry her tragedies, I’ll wear her sincerity
Choose me I beg,
for God’s sake choose me.

© Graham Sherwood 05/2018