What the Binoculars Saw - by Jeremy Gregg
I found this amazing character during a visit to Dolly Python (she’s been sold by now). Love the beautiful design of her tattoos, along with this demure, gloved pose.
Jeremy Gregg is a public speaker, entrepreneur, teacher and poet. I’m honored he took the time to tell her story, as he felt it. You can find more about him and his work at jeremygregg.com.
"Each of us started out life as a child,” she started to say to herself, “but then we grew up –” And the words gave way to her lipstick.
Eyes became carnal beneath her delicate swish; beyond the pane, the skyline, too, grew dark.
She struck a match to light a lamp, but watched it burn til it was gone. Her fingers briefly glowed with pain; she laughed, then kissed them one by one, as if to say,
“Goodbye.”
She lanced the soot-stick into the trash, then reached for another — but found no more within the book with dice on its cover, left by a lover whose flame was now gone.
The wind howled like a lost child but did not wake her cat in the window.
“Typical man,” she sighed as she fingered the jewels that she kept in a bowl lined with beads; some native had told her his father had used it to pray to a god whose name he’d not share.
The mirror bit with particular teeth, demanding she jump through the hoops in its gaze.
“I can always rely on you, my loves,” she whispered as she pinned them in.
They hung from her ears like gymnasts’ rings, still stained with the sweat of the men they let fall.
The bureau beside her bed revealed a pair of blood-red leather gloves she liked to wear whenever she worked.
From the back of her chair, she lifted the delicate neck of a jacket whose soft satin shell concealed a lining of hard, darkened lace.
It had belonged to her mother, now dead for more years than she’d known her alive.
As smooth outside as a summer peach, she slid her bare skin through its still-scratchy arms.
Glove-tipped fingers counted birds inked among the blooms that grew across her back and down her collar, then past her breasts to the valley below.
“I shall fear no evil,” she smiled. ”Thy rod, thy staff…” She closed her eyes, then rubbed her temple. “They comfort me…”
The old man who lived across the alley was finally finding a use for his binoculars when his wife erupted into the room and put an end to the rest of his joys.
The light went out in the room with a view; a door cracked open, and then she was gone."