ISLA REAVLEY

Muse

I was struck by inspiration from a drowning girl, hair drifting like silk, dress billowing in clouds. In those empty wastes, we watched her, suspended in glass. Spectators’ gaping mouths, and crinkled smiles, traced her drunken posture; her neck tipped back, christened with long purples, and a nettle coronet, as weeds clutching bones, dragged her further still.

What a shame!

A shame, but Ophelia doesn’t hold a candle to her. No, she died twice as charmingly –lips parted, features delicately marred, except for swollen limbs, stiff and cold, smudged and sunk, from halfway down. Even that was easily admired: her tint, those blue-blushed cheeks, powder, royal, I crushed into paint for my piece. A lovely grey scrubbed from decayed finger tips, crushed, blended, and swept smooth to shade my sky. Beaten, she came up lavender.