by Dana Jerman

From a canopied yellow bed in the heart of an island...

A yellowed room like a film set from the past...

Diaphanous curtains filter exquisite hourless light

which ricochets on square white tile from the bath adjacent

while unfinished painted wallpaper soaks in patches

the green day surrounding the downstairs garden picture window.

A woman seated cross legged at the foot of the bed, facing its head,

wondering when she will leave this moment and approach the washstand,

leave and resume a procession down the long hallway to the next room.

Knowing just how the carpet will embrace her footsteps

as her tuned walking becomes the artifact of meditation

and her gaze invents the only true story.

From the wild grounds beyond, the high broken turret of the castle

can be seen, shirking amongst swayed and loaming treetops.

The great rooted beasts cannot guess into what shape and service

their brethren have been rendered.

Inside, an ornate spiral stitch-wends the floors together,

inviting a helix of steps to climb, on and with, fro and to,

to reach each their platforms crowded by abyss.

Stopping far from a level concourse behind a mahogany door

lies a room where a girl poses for a portrait on the floor

between a large book and a crooked television.

Her gossamer night dress hasn't been changed from in nights and days.

Long sleeved powder blue with delicate waves of fringe at the neck.

Her salt and sand hair swept to the side. Dolls hovering on the royal

purple armchair above the thin baize which is ripped and peeling

at the corners as if crawling up toward its own abandonment.

Other dilapidated creatures of this anachronistic skylit neverland

dome their futures with dust, and remain hidden like gears in a quiet machine.

A warped ceiling affixes its glitz to grime.

We are happy to be echoes in the encasement.

Total legends in an institute of fanatics. A revolution in a graveyard.

Lost girls exploring the ornate prisons of their zero-sum souls,

keening amid the shells of fallen masks and shattered wine bottle glass.

Our memories are the stock of alchemy.