Julie in the Music Box

The girl enters the castle
every room is a music box & plays a different melody
in this room she is Beauty, in the pantry she is lost
some rooms are little more than closets,
in others the bed hasn't been made. There is an elegant
nursery, and a room with bandaids & antiseptics.
The library is full of torts, and she is perfect there,
imagined, like the brocade wall paper; the inkwell has
been filled with black india. Someone will scrawl her
a memo and try to make it rhyme.

In fact, in no part of the story
is her patience understood, the careful walk
through hallways of chambers uncatalogued
this particular lifetime, more than just an
exploration, more than just a ramble through
the day::::::odyssey she trembles
when she can admit this she holds herself
carefully, a casual downward, southward glance
to check the certainty of the camera's placement.

some questions (she's forthright, okay?)
who designed this monstrosity (you goon!)
who owns the map?
who could have been the one?

She casts a key in the kitchen. Some doors
are locked, but not for long. She will let nothing
hide anymore. She tears the curtains down.
She opens the windows.
She makes this place perfect.

This was an attempt to describe a girl I briefly, very briefly, had a mild thing with when I was doing theatre in Springfield in 1994. She was 25 at the time and I knew she couldn't get past the fact that I was 44. She was dating a doctor who had plenty of money, but she was attracted to the gypsy boy that I probably appeared to her at the time. Later she moved to Chicago.