Down to the Bone

Pale as her proclivities – an expertise in meditative
sighing, and a slow determination to accomplish dying –
the Queen of Colorlessness sought and brought,
she thought, at least some small distinction to her living
person through the framing of her ghostliness with every
jeweled hue she could command to be employed
around her from her boundless realm. She had a savvy

decorator at the helm: who had a liking for the grand guignol –
brilliant crimson, green and rose and gold and purple paper,
marble, fabric were subjected to his maverick tastes
to set a lively contrast to the waste of her wan face –
a gloomy set outside her window always showed
the blackest night, a crescent moon, a fleck of star,
which he had hoped might jar the queen into the reverie

that there were creatures kindred to her out there in the sky’s
dark splay, however far away from her they seemed to have
to stay. Years and years went by this way, and in the course
of things, she died, and by her own decree, was left there
as a corpse to dry, become as smooth and cool as ivory.
She sits there, to this day, beautiful at last. Residing –
still as stone – she’d lived down to the bone.

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