Forgotten Circus

The notebook stretches its imposed lines across my field of my vision. The blue lines of formality, rigidity…they are the lines of frigid women in black dresses that reach up to their necks, the impotent men that squirm at the thought of my oozing love, enough love to cover the world if given enough time and enough fingers. But my cupboards are not filled with plain white paper, the lines of chastity are useful, despite their sexless impulse… I use them for their discipline, for their linear spankings. Order from chaos, I cast out the net into the cosmos and pull back orange starfish and leopards. Instead of hoops, I jump through a singular diamond eye and find a magician waiting for me in a metal cage. I take his top hat and shrink it, placing it on my head with a firm nod to the fashion critics who sit in the bleachers, they applaud in short bursts of excited fury, looking to each other with disbelief in one eye and tears in the other. Their moving hands hide the daggers well, their polite smiles mask the ventriloquist who has already spoken to Vogue. I cannot tell if they have drunk from the same glass as the women of the lines. “Lick it up!” I shout, “there’s more in the back!” The crowd stands to applaud. The bleachers are full and there’s a performance for the new king. The trapeze is set and taught, the elephants are glittering in their jeweled crowns and painted saddles, their riders are bejeweled in head-dresses and their faces are masked in lace and their small chests are bound in tight black bodices that describe their curves as only a true poet could. They balance on tiptoes above the great gray beasts, like fairies that ride the magic waves of night. The king is ready and seated, the jesters have finished with their truths and the jury waits to judge. The magician is full of old secrets and as the people turn towards us, we escape together through the diamond eye of the leopard, back to a room with carpets and strange light bulbs with no strings and a dry heat that smells of vitamins and soft black hair and warm welcoming arms. He holds my hand as we step through prismatic light seeped in yellow and gold, the color of tigers and opened treasure chests. He takes my hand and we step through, my blindfold forgotten on the sandy floor of the cage. My eyes remember this magic chamber of music. We have left a king waiting upon his throne, we have left sad clowns who look in desperation to their barking dogs and critics who look to their companions for ideas. We mean them no harm, but the curtain called and the lens of the crystal ball gathers us like prophecy. We are together and we disrobe, revealing our true forms, the shapeless crystals that shine more brightly than the night.