The Evening Dress

untouched, a beautiful size 12 gleaming in the lamplight, pressed up hard against the cold steel teeth of a vice that grips her like some old jazzman’s fist around a bottle at midnight, unyielding, eternal.

naked in her isolation she waits, this slender shank of possibility, for the first tender strand of cotton to come winding around her, and the soft dub pulled from a jackrabbit pelt, thumb and forefinger dancing slow, the sacred wax smeared across the thread like holy oil before the ritual begins.

then slow, concentric wrapping of taut yarn, fraying gently against roughened skin, building her an evening dress of marabou and elk, clipped back neat and wild at once, glowing yellow and green in the hush of the room. tinsel, silver and gold, flashing at her waist, and fine blades snipping through delicate feathers for wings that will tremble in the current.

and finally a single bright bead at her throat to finish her, to complete her, this little feathered prayer sent out into the world.

and somewhere out there, the elusive trout, that sly ghost of the river, waits on a patch of water still, waiting, waiting, ready to play the ancient game of deception and ruse.

marabou and elk—
the loveliest liar I ever
sent to the water.