After The Bath

After The Bath

I ceased to be a calendar girl,
long before high heels buttered my legs,
making me slippery, rather than slick;
a maladroit fawn struggling to cross
a car-studded roadway.

There were nights,
sequestered in a blackish house,
when discouragement would cover me
like an itchy blanket,
so to ease the discomfort
I would reinvent myself,
conjuring reflections in night-draped windows,
perceptions I could live with.
After some time,
I decided to stop looking;
my image was doggedly imperfect,
with odious whirrs of light blazing
over every infraction of proper beauty.

Then today,
as I rose from the water,
a brief lapse in judgment
lead me to see
the other side of this.
A virtuous mirror lavished me
with swells of coddled cream
and unbound contours,
arousing some strange disorder.
A wide-eyed seated bather,
with no inference of bone,
wearing only a dispersion of pinks and plaster,
connecting forbidden points of focus.

Titian Venus, in winter-white skin,
glazing the graces from
every hopeful angle,
needing only a fistful of red petals
to get the mood right.
The purity of this is the root
of the inspiration,
ripening a woman naturally,
enhancing the butterfly flutter delicacy
of her unintentional elegance.
Any sort of embellishment
would blight the sublimity
of the lesser-known flower.

Now,
would be the right time
to capture me in oils.