deMexico's Muse

I looked down at the cover of the book and held my breath.  It was like she was there in front of me, after 5 years of absence, not in flesh and blood but on paper.  Everything about it had her mark, her essence.  The way her lustrous ebony curls bounced and fell around her face, her sultry chestnut eyes would glitter with mischief and her skin...tanned and so smooth, unbelievably smooth like the velvety petals of an expensive rose.  But it wasn’t just that irresistible presence she had, that power to make every head turn, male and female.  It was how she made you feel like you were the only person in the room.  How she made you want to absorb her, drink her in.  How she was so perfect you were scared to touch her in case she melted away like a mirage, or faded like a desert orchid.  Like a drug, or a magician she would weave her spell around you like a cloak, making you addicted to her.  She was technicolour and while her light shone on me, the rest of the world became black and white.



But I wanted to clip those beautiful wings.  Every smile she flashed at someone other than me, every sultry glance in a direction away from my own sent a dagger through my heart that twisted deeper and deeper.  I became the snake in Eden, coiling more and more tightly around her with every passing day.  Sometimes she’d fall asleep in the bath late at night and I’d watch her, with her head falling to one side, the delicate line of her jaw against her honey coloured shoulder, and her soft, damson lips slightly apart as she gently breathed.  She was intoxicating.



Then one night, I saw her in someone else’s arms.  Her head was thrown back and as the sound of her laughter rippled gaily across the club, others laughed too.  She had that power – when she was happy, it spread like music.  It was a guy, one of the bouncers, and I’d seen her talking to him before.  I knew he was just there to protect her from the punters, I knew that.  But tonight she seemed different and the annoyance that began to bubble inside me slowly turned to rage.  Every laugh I overheard was another bullet loaded in my gun of ill-intent. 

The only sound that night was my ragged breathing as I watched her in the bath.  I thought I was being quiet, but the fury coursing through me had made me clumsy.  When I broke the glass to get into her apartment and it shattered on to the tiles below I heard her scream.  By the time I got into the bathroom her dark eyes were round with terror. 



‘Who are you?’ she asked.  But I didn’t reply and as I tightened my coil her magic ebbed away. 



deMexico’s book cover is a shabby and well thumbed copy but it’s her nevertheless. 



‘Do you want it or what?’ Doreen asked.  She’s brusque, but nice enough.  Her job is passing round the library trolley because she’s in here long term and it’s an easy job for her old bones.  Me on the other hand, it’s been laundry duty every day for months.



‘Yeah, Doreen.  I want it’, I replied.  And you’re not getting this one back, I thought, as I lay on my bunk. 



I ran my finger across the image and as the sun shone through the bars of my cell and fell across the cover, it was like she came to life again in my mind.  I thought of those nights when I would sit alone in the darkened corner, away from the sweating men, leering unpleasantly.  She wasn’t for them.  The thick curtains drew back and she would glitter on that stage beneath the lights, she was incandescent, perfect.  Sometimes she would catch my eye and my heart would stop for a moment, I lived for that glimmer of attention every night.  Some nights she would wink at me conspiratorially, and it made me feel like we had a special connection, two women in this men-only club. 



But she betrayed me.

 

And now here I am trapped in this black and white world of diminished responsibility for the next 3 decades.  But still I have the precious memories of her burlesque show that flicker like a film reel against the walls of my mind.  And now I have a picture of her, so I can never forget my angel with her clipped wings knitted into my heart.