Day number 2

Day number 2 
So here we go.....

The Portrait – this painting has been in my mind’s eye for sometime. She’s nobody I know – so why is she in my head?


The Portrait

She hangs above the hearth with ringlets that helter-skelter down her face.
What is she thinking?
Her expression gives little away of the turbulence that churns within.
Her lips are slightly parted, ruby red mouth mid sentence,
unspoken and trapped in a silent flourish shaped by the artist’s whim.
What is she saying?
Her eyes are wide and timeless, intense and deep and green.
And though you try to avoid her gaze, transfixed you stare intent.
Discomforted by intimacy that you can’t avoid, you glance to look beyond
but magnets draw you back and you drown again in frozen expression.
Who was she?
She knows what you are thinking. You feel her slicing through your brain, exposing every weakness, mocking your frailty, she bores into your heart
and makes bare your inner soul.
Your inability to escape her amuses her. Do you detect a smile creeping or are you merely intoxicated by her beauty, fanciful thoughts at war with logic?
You break the spell and avert your eyes.
Too late, she infiltrated your hopes and dreams and now they lay stripped and stark, worthless and naïve.
And as you walk away, to recover your respect in hope, you feel her eyes still,
indelibly branding her mark upon your enslaved skin.
You want to walk away and forget the eyes that follow and you wrestle with desire.
You steer a path to escape and the conqueror awaits.
You stumble to the door, heart pounding more wildly than it should
but you cannot fight the sensation of eyes burrowing into your back.
And you turn to see her watching, triumph smirking across her lips.
Why is she laughing?

Linda Prince