Mislaid

The chimerical script rewritten over and above the storied roof with picaresque eyes, how it suspends her belief. In what, some glad-wrapped God? Seal and deliver with disbelieved skin - she can't wait another night

Palatial proving grounds fool even the keenest of goodwill sojourners. Could bad luck ever befall a person in this nesting paradise?

He said "she said" diatribes never cut through nascent cull cloth

No immaterial witnesses, and just look at that fortuitous charm, he's a keeper! Tailored to fit the societal front-facing tick of approval, fashioned to assail those check-marked cheeks in the quelled quiet of dying light

Hard enough to cause bruising? He knows better

Muse makeup runs begging lest she's forced to unwrap so many blaming boxes, it's the bluster, it's the bravado. And the problems pile a mile (or more) high in petite feet

Brobdingnagian is her measure

Parlay and sway, paint a millionth pretty picture of all's well, even when she's breathless. Reduction eggshells litter the walk-in wardrobe, spoiled by SO MANY sewn-to-conceal skirts and dais dresses

Today, she runs

Further this time, even as she feels a stitch of shorn in her side. She's longing for (now broaching?) some labeled precipice of safe-please-let-it-be-secure-sanctuary, replete with shaken-held brochure

Brocade double doors douse a faux spring, one false taste, as they swing like swansongs behind her. He's already here. Those febrile, familiar hands debride cotton wool from a futureless face

Loose lip falsehoods of "my wife's going through a difficult time at work" cushion guilt like cyanotic "we understand, she does look confused" wound waylaid

Collective amnesia lowlights the upper-class ruse, city-wide and alive, a benthic bubble of sizeable consequence

He lied

She?

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(c) Edward Swafford 2025

*** Title image by Sergio López from Pexels***