After The Fall
faced with the challenge of rebuilding her anatomy the trapeze artist took her head in her hands and wept for seventeen days. the doctors held out no hope.
she left hospital. she hid in a hotel room in marseilles. but she was her father's daughter. when she was done with her self-pity, she got to work.
in truth it was makeover which deserved the attention it later received in the paris papers. her face and neck was a crown of flowering japanese cherries. her cheeks were dover sole. three hectares of rocky island constituted her back. for shoulders she built herself a castle with two towers and a drawbridge. her breasts were flowing cataracts of desert water - she had been to north africa. her elbows were swinging great pendulums of starlight. her eyes were two black abacus stones.
every day she took a ferry boat through the black pond of her heart, filled with lilies. she was undisturbed by the great flocks of flamingos and ducks which gathered there to admire her courage and applaud her sheer invention.
her feet and toes were lobster claws. her hands and fingers moved like moths. for legs she chose the work of the finest living cabinetmaker in vienna. her navel was carved from limestone. her womb? wind-filled canvas. her lungs? great dying timbers from a shipwreck in the calanques.
her bones? chin of a whale. her vagina? a mussel bed at low tide. her asshole, like her heart, was made of alabaster.
after a month she was done rebuilding her anatomy. sea terrapins swarmed in her veins. her nose resembled pointe rouge at dusk. the sea clapped its hands whenever she laughed. when she spoke, tourist ships in marseille harbor shook so hard that the sky was filled with volcanic ash.
she was done. but she was not done. now the trapeze artist was going to have to teach herself how to fly.
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