by Kat Wood

She wasn’t born to be a saint,
But modelled to a mind’s ideal
And, with celestial restraint,
Held hostage by ill-founded zeal.

The two had met a single time
But in his memory each day
Her image changed to one sublime,
Venus incarnate, he would say.

And so the girl became a squat
For visionary reveries,
A requisitioned, fertile plot
In which to grow his fantasies.

The artist deified her name,
He fashioned halos for her head,
Her body was a spinning frame
On which he spun Delusion’s thread.

But skeletons, although they hide,
No less exist beneath the skin;
And secret treasures sleep inside:
Life-giving marrow deep within.

The wild imaginings he placed
Before her masked the real prize;
Her earthly virtues fell to waste,
Forsaken by his upturned eyes.