Frog Eyes - "A Flower in a Glove"

Beginning with legs, jeans, socks, shoes, polish and a ring. Desdemona drinking a glass of milk, still drinks milk, an unbreakable habit for peanut butter toast. A distant family, father in sales (distant, travelling), brothers (one into piano, insular, one a chessmaster, hesitant) mother in jail (innocent-ish).

A fictional daughter asks her a question in the shower and she giggles in response, "It's sex, but you're too young, I'll tell you later". On the bus, she's in another life, tilling fields and working her hands hard and tough and big-breasted raising a freckly family and happily eating a potato a day and maybe some carrots. A hard life looks like fun from the window of a bus, she smirks, twirling her hair between her fingers, on the way to the hospital.

In the spilled water, in the splash of the mop, she hears ocean life and ocean warmth, slapping waves that curl like God breathes water. In the squint of a smoke break, these days begin to feel like thin threads, all delicate and breakable on their own, but add up to something large, some huge work, some final majesty. Possibly a pile of nice threads, checking the schedule for the weekend, working nights. Arguing with a thin aggressive man about visiting hours, she smiles warmly, almost laughing, "I sound like quite the dictator, don't I?" and he leaves without a scene.

Desdemona washes her hands, wipes them on a towel, and thinks of the polish on her toes, it's wine and perhaps tonight she'll have some wine.

There are no words to describe how deep this goes, as she looks down the laundry chute. The gurgling, choking throat of a Sarlacc, stripping a bed with the sun in her eyes.

Your majesty, your tar-covered robes are ready, folding gowns with sore shoulders. Competition is the unnatural order of everything, watching the traffic on the salty walk to the bus stop.

If I had left I never would have met you, I never would have seen this, thought Desdemona, playfully catching the busdriver's eye.

[released Apr. 24th]

--

Elsewhere: new music video by Michel Gondry. Humble enough to be inviting, simple enough to be great.

(painting by Paul Lehr)