From We Take Me Apart (A Novella)

by Molly Gaudry

 

A carafe, that is a blind glass. —Gertrude Stein

 

In a different version it was not a pea but a cocoa bean

you came to us in the night

soaked in cold

trembling with fatigue

Mother brought you inside where the last of our candles were burning

prepared for you a bed of many mattresses

in the morning she asked how you had slept

you nodded

I was the one who did the beds

knew you had not slept on those mattresses

had slept on the floor

why

I had never seen a being so beautiful as you

who in passing my cocoa-bean test brought me great inspiration

the dresses I fashioned from that point forward where winged creations made from the excesses of water on hand

each drop sewn one on top of the next so that the texture was rippling as a pond beneath the moon….

 

Molly Gaudry is the author of the verse novel, We Take Me Apart (Mud Luscious Press, 2009), and the editor of Tell: An Anthology of Expository Narrative (Flatmancrooked, 2010). She curates Walking Man Gallery, edits Willows Wept Press and Willows Wept Review, is a co-founding editor of Twelve Stories, and is an associate editor for Keyhole Magazine. She writes occasional book reviews for East&West Magazine, and she’s currently tweeting a chapter of her new verse novel, FLORA THE WHORE, every few days on Twitter.

 

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