The Sculptor
by
Mickie Kennedy
The white moon returns as you stand beneath a pine. A brook in the distance plays the notes to a song. Your dress is light blue and catches in the shadows as you spin. This is the way I will remember you.
A young boy collecting firewood finds you sliced open and blue. A deputy crisscrosses the woods with a pair of bloodhounds for the assailant's scent. The red pattern on your chest resembles a corsage.
Someone takes your picture before they gurney your body down the hill. The local newspaper will cover the investigation detailing the words of your mother and teachers. She was young and innocent.
I recall our evenings in the backseat of my Buick and wonder how long before the police questioned me, but they do not.
An old drunk confesses the next day, says he only wanted to talk, but you kept acting afraid of him, so he became the thing you feared. Other than the knife, he says he never touched you, which the medical examiner confirms.
I dream you are a statue, white marble, and I stand beneath your pedestal. Your feet have been chiseled inaccurately, so I must take a hammer to them until all that remains are fragments of the woman you never were.
I suffer alone and only at your funeral do I fully appreciate that you will not becoming back to meet me in the shadows of a back row at the Saturday matinee.
The stuffed lion that I won for you at the county fair has been placed in your casket, along with several other mementos. I want to reach inside and take it. I want to rob your afterlife, to hold it again, to smell popcorn and cotton candy, and never let go.
Your parents are folded wings of a swan I coax into being from the program. There are words, and there are songs, but I could not tell you much about either.
I could tell you how you looked near the stone bridge at the edge of town, the brown of your hair against a wall of green ivy.
I could tell you this and more, but I cannot. You are a length of broom I cannot make behave across a kitchen floor. You are my bed, forever unmade.
I am the drunk's apprentice thirty years before I find a suitable substitute in the woods. Your statue will be gray granite and just as imperfect, my hammer unmaking her in your honor, fist-sized rocks with veins of red.
A young boy collecting firewood finds you sliced open and blue. A deputy crisscrosses the woods with a pair of bloodhounds for the assailant's scent. The red pattern on your chest resembles a corsage.
Someone takes your picture before they gurney your body down the hill. The local newspaper will cover the investigation detailing the words of your mother and teachers. She was young and innocent.
I recall our evenings in the backseat of my Buick and wonder how long before the police questioned me, but they do not.
An old drunk confesses the next day, says he only wanted to talk, but you kept acting afraid of him, so he became the thing you feared. Other than the knife, he says he never touched you, which the medical examiner confirms.
I dream you are a statue, white marble, and I stand beneath your pedestal. Your feet have been chiseled inaccurately, so I must take a hammer to them until all that remains are fragments of the woman you never were.
I suffer alone and only at your funeral do I fully appreciate that you will not becoming back to meet me in the shadows of a back row at the Saturday matinee.
The stuffed lion that I won for you at the county fair has been placed in your casket, along with several other mementos. I want to reach inside and take it. I want to rob your afterlife, to hold it again, to smell popcorn and cotton candy, and never let go.
Your parents are folded wings of a swan I coax into being from the program. There are words, and there are songs, but I could not tell you much about either.
I could tell you how you looked near the stone bridge at the edge of town, the brown of your hair against a wall of green ivy.
I could tell you this and more, but I cannot. You are a length of broom I cannot make behave across a kitchen floor. You are my bed, forever unmade.
I am the drunk's apprentice thirty years before I find a suitable substitute in the woods. Your statue will be gray granite and just as imperfect, my hammer unmaking her in your honor, fist-sized rocks with veins of red.
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