She lived life guided by a lacy mythology, dreamily wandering and occasionally skipping along as if her path was crocheted by Belgian nuns. She believed that even the holes and gaps were there by design. She could turn a troubling moment into a thing of wonder as effortlessly as placing a doily over a water stain on a table.
Some found her spirit inspiring. Others found her optimism to be offensive.
Waiting for the bus in the middle of a torrential rain she exclaimed to all willing to listen, “What a handsome downpour!” The remark caused some to reconsider the weather and others to consider violence.
Her glow attracted lovers quite easily. Melancholic men wished she might be their cure. Sullen women hoped her bliss might rub off on them like lavender hand lotion.
It never lasted.
Soon all that bright light would explode like a purple Armageddon.
“Shut the fuck up, the cucumber is just a cucumber, it is not a glorious shade of green.”
She never argued back. Nor was she ever hurt. Or smug. That pissed them off even more.
So they would leave.
And she would hug them good bye, kiss them on the lips lightly and for a brief moment they would reconsider. For a split second they would taste her light again and they would want to drink it up, swallow her whole, and allow her brightness to stain their pragmatic, objective souls. Then they would pull away and look into her eyes one last time and they would know that they couldn’t stay.
And so would she.
It’s how she wanted it to be.
She didn’t want the annoyed glances, the exasperation, the dissonant clang of joyful wonder colliding with steely truth.
She was ready for the next one.
He might be a recovering leftist guiltily cashing in his Apple stock to start an organic winery. He might feel like he is ready for her.
But he won’t be.
He will wake one morning and she will be sitting up in bed staring out the window into the pre-dawn darkness and he’ll ask what she’s doing. And her answer won’t make sense to him. In the stars she sees patterns of lacy beauty; an inverse black hole that feeds her soul. He doesn’t see the lace. He only sees the unraveling to come.
