Jenny Lee
Jenny Le is a writer effacing the stigma around mental illness with the opalescence of her sartorial style, and non-fiction works. She is a current student at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is studying Creative Writing. Jenny can be found on Instagram at jenny.le11.
Main Building, Korman Galleries 221-223
Waiting, 1881, Mary K. Trotter (America, 1859-1925).
I tip toe around you, careful not to attract your attention, my steps falling like taps on crème brûlée, skimming against the surface, brief touches on egg shells. Love is an art form and I’m learning yours, the curve of your neck, the slope of your back, your sculpted face, your body, your entirety, a language in longing kisses, yearning wishes, missing the glimpses of bliss and your lips, your name formed in the echoes of my nervous lisp.
Content and form starts with you, your eyes gazing at a frame, brushstrokes and colors tamed, I pay the fare to the PMA for tickets by your heavenly side, and my quiet contented sighs. You step back to trace the lighting, the shadows and glow of the willowy waif in a flowing white gown trailing on the floor, I’m unmoored. I inhale deeply a perfumed wisp, wistful, and exhale my weakness. Tap you on your shoulder and point out the Cupid with a bow and arrow blending in the background like forgotten wallpaper, a wallflower longing to be seen, for you to see. Within the gilded golden frame, I’m the shadow overtaking, creeping clinging wild ivy, and you the figure at center, watching the dog the way I watch you, nothing amiss, muted flowers towering in silent shades of subtlety.
Your smile, an encouragement, I motion with my hands noting how it resembles the Diana sculpture in the main hall, a seer overseeing us from her inclining tower of stairs, she aimed and struck, an arrow pierced through my heart with the biblical origin of your calling, the gift of God, borne thirty nine years ago when the moon was eleven days old waxing your fate, our tale, a sliver in the sky of my birth night, approximately 2,732 days away.
really? you’re a sagittarius? I’m a gemini
I know nothing about astrology
they’re sister signs
and?
twin flames
To you, this speaks louder than me, my presence, the painting. It foretells the hand of winter that brought me snuggled in the crook of your coat sleeve to avoid the blustery wind and chills to clasp the wrist of spring with promised cherry blossoms and me crawling under your skin while wrapped and coiled down the sweaty arm of summer to shoulder your fall along the path of the Schuylkill River trail to the rocky steps we both raced headfirst towards that I somehow win by a breath, under the waning of the moon that lowered your defenses signaling she’s safe for an archer, she’s ruled by Jupiter and truth, you by facts, astrology, and mercurial moods, signed by the stars, she’s superstitious but you’re the first one swept off your feet when she beats you by a second to the finish line and turns slow motion towards you, the world spinning an invisible string flossed between her wide toothy smile to the criss crossed laces of your dress shoe at the heels of her soft beauty.