Tell Me Your Secrets and All Your Lies Too

Once again, we begin at zero.

Photo by Jill Burrow from Pexels

It’s easy to think I own you just from the way you stare at me across the room.

I have you on the end of the string — the careful tautness of a want so true— and even in this gallery filled with muses and mischief I know you’re tracing the lines of my dress.

“Are you a friend of the artist?” I incline my head and see a man who’s pushing sixty from the way his beard and hair are more gray than black.

I hide my smile behind my glass of champagne. “Old college friend,” I say.

It’s not exactly a lie. There were days I fooled your art school professors with my banter, and they didn’t seem to mind me hanging around the studios as long as you were perfecting your masterpieces. Drop cloths were our sheets, and the eyes of half-finished busts watched over us when we let the passion run wild for brief bursts.

The only deception I allowed myself was that I was the only one — but there were — are — others. I may think myself a force of nature, but you’re a storm too, one that all manner of woman wants to try to tame.

“He’s something, isn’t he?” The man’s voice is filled with a longing as if he wishes he could capture some of your magic in a bottle. Don’t we all, I think. I’ve felt…