The Amaranthine Poet

Metamorphosis of a Pink Girl

July 1, 2008 on 1:57 am | In Everything | No Comments

They are called dreams: Without warning, we are taken away, released from time–beyond the reasoning of the conscious mind. Without warning, we are confronted by nuanced fears, somehow discerning the messages written on the bellowing hearts of tears. Entering a cavern of sleep–dreams–effervescent, like the foaming tide–gently pull us deep inside…

A pink girl lies in bed at the close of the day, shuts her eyes and she is taken away. Finds herself walking a spiraling road and sees a sojourning juggler singing an ode–”Ode to pleasure, ode to pace, ode to each moment in each sacred place…”
The pink girl stops to listen to the juggler’s words–each verse is sad, like raindrops weighing down the wings of bluebirds. He tells her he can no longer entertain a crowd; by the end of his act they’re all laughing out loud. He used to be amazing, all would say, until a feral child bit off three of his fingers one day…and now he is no longer able to juggle a ball, for his maimed hands are much too small.
The pink girl watches his mouth open wide as it fills with his sorrowful stories, his heart sinks below his ribs with the burden of his worries. After he is done speaking, he takes a deep breath and swallows, and the black cave stretching from his heart to his mouth, once again, hollows.

The juggler touches the pink girl’s tender cheek and suddenly becomes envious of the pure waters rushing through her eyes. He decides to ravish her delicate spirit and fill her head with terrible lies.

“Iridescent creature,” he begins, “One day, five cotton clouds will darken your fear, fade with each morning, but with night, reappear. Your heart will expand like the harvest moon, scintillate with starry snowflakes on the bluest day of June–But the five clouds will pour the ocean over your head and hold you under, storm over the roses of your cheeks until your honey heart is torn asunder.”

The pink girl, listening to the juggler tell her of her awful fate, begins to cry. And the pure waters through her eyes begin to wither and dry. Her pink flesh begins to crumble and form into a heaving balloon. It envelops her, filling with her tears, and pulls around her like a black cocoon.
The juggler sneers and continues singing his ode as his drinks a little of her soul and hurries down the spiraling road.

After a few hours, dawn arrives and shatters the moon, and the raining diamond shards split open the girl’s cocoon. Emerging, she is no longer a pink girl, but a scarlet woman, lying beneath the sky’s fiery pearl. She sits in lamenting silence, so that she can hear, as the giant ivory star whispers in her ear–

“The icy blue, or the vast green–we lie in great pastures, but drown in the sea; the more you’ve listened, the less you’ve seen. It’s not hard to guess the place where you will be.”

The scarlet woman watches the world begin to fade and descend as her consciousness returns and her frightful dream comes to an end.

The scarlet woman is lying awake, the taste of scouring rain on her callous lips. Her hands are old as she lifts them to her face–innocence drowning in the tears on her fingertips.
She looks out the window and sees five cotton clouds pressed against the pane, asphyxiating dancing moths as their golden wings tremble in the rain. Now, the scarlet woman begins to remember what she has dreamt–

Cold water rushes through her veins amid
the thoughts of bewilderment, trying to remember what the juggler, in her dream, did.
Violets pirouette inside the scarlet woman’s head,
As she desperately tries to remember exactly what the juggler said.

Jenna Awad
The Amaranthine Poet

©Jenna Awad. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication without express permission by the author by any means, mechanical, electronic or otherwise is a violation of all application laws.
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