Here’s my response to last week’s Meta Exercise. Since Julio Cortázar used a narrative piece of art, a novel, to construct his excellent short short. I thought I’d give myself a challenge and try to do the same thing with a less experiential sort of art, in this case, sculpture. Points to anyone who can identify the sculptor.

Daphne

Inside the museum, she allowed herself to be politely interested in the art, the pale statues he loved so much, David twisting back his arm, a grim set to his mouth, Poseidon’s hand against Persephone’s thigh, hands sunk into the cool marble as if it were a marshmallow. He had arranged for this private trip to the museum; he had paid for their first class plane tickets to Rome, but that was to be expected.

At first, she’d found his attentions in the bar where she worked flattering but overwhelming. His lavish words and gifts masked a paucity of spirit, a blindness, an inability to admire things for anything more than the surface.

At his request, their guide left them in a small room at one corner of the museum. He had wanted to look at a particular sculpture, by themselves, in the quiet. Her boredom faded as she stood beside him, studying it. The sculptor caught two lovers in a moment of passion. He reached out, determined to hold her in his arms, cape blown back by the breeze. She, her hair flying, stood perched on a precipice, hands stretched up, fingers and toes already sprouting leaves, bark snaking up her waist.

In the museum, he stepped behind her, one hand slipping toward her waist, and she turned her head back toward him, open-mouthed, silent, lost.

Cross posted at LizzieStark.com