BLIND LILY

 

She always wore an Oriental Lily
tucked seductively behind her right ear.
She had never been to the Orient
but in her past life she was a geisha.

The fortune teller in the old Victorian
told her so; it had to be true.

 

Downstairs, pale linen curtains shrank
under the sun's heat, their beauty marred
beneath a patina of ochre rays.

Soaking in a bath of orange blossoms,
she tried to wipe away the porcelain
veneer that coated her life. White was
never her color; she longed to be a yellow
girl who glowed in the sun like Buddha.

So she prayed to him, chanting words she
memorized from a travel brochure. Gray
strands floated like jellyfish around her
envy, stinging her cloudy eyes.

 

She couldn’t see.

Sandy Hiss' poetry and fiction have appeared in Cabaret New Angeles, Autographs, Eskimopie, Scorched Earth, Autumn Leaves, The Cat's Meow, Poet's Haven, True Poet, The Green Silk Journal, Ken*Again, Thick With Conviction, Fresh!, Bolts of Silk, Zone, KuPoZine, and CC&D.  Her work is forthcoming in Falling Star Magazine.  Sandy resides in Wyoming with her two hyper children and Aquarian husband.  She is also the editor of Flutter, an online poetry Magazine.

Dance to Death, Issue III

©2008 Sorrowland Press and all respective artists within.