She looks up, aghast and morose
For the tableau now looks like a hollowed ghost
The maze garden was overflowing
The bay windows were open and glowing
She squints, and she wills her mind to think
Of the evergreen arches that fluttered with pink
How the front steps rose upward like a waterfall,
then crested like waves over a rock wall.
When she looks back, her eyes fall instead,
crashing in shades of dark, deep red.
The belles of the ball rang so wonderfully witty
an acrylic scene adorned so pretty
Delicately arranged, thinly framed
She was too revere the art, or despise the game,
of the grandest nature, by the grandest names
On the bathroom floor she arranges the broken mirror of time like a trifold,
stares enamored at the shimmering rose gold.
How she can still feel the grip of the hand grasping too tight.
Like a necklace that was never wrong, just tied not right.
The bodice was swiftly squeezing.
The biting one-liners bordered on fanged-edged teasing.
The twirling light she thought made the whole place look like life,
were only the fair warnings of foreboding moonlight.
Upholstered chairs and decor in the dining hall now tilt.
Bunches of red roses in the rotunda now wilt.
She wonders about the silvery transparency, the polished cold
How she would shrink back from petrifying little jokes
The figures she thought looked so happy they could float.
On the bathroom floor she knows she’s dancing silent and still
Indefinitely against her will
Will she ever escape from the place she was last,
when her eyes shutter closed like a flag at half mast?
It’s always the prettiest glass that’s the easiest to break.
The prisms a little dimmer when the emeralds fake.
Things are always different on the double take.