Muse fled. She spirited away the day heaven and earth shattered. TRUST, LUST, DUST, the words sprawled across sign posts, a poster, art reflecting life somewhere down there, down there in the Bywater of New Orleans. There at the end of all things, Muse visited before her exodus, summoned by a mother’s heart, summoned by the charge given her by the mother. “Keep writing,” the first-born son had written, the last words of his will to his mother. So, Muse labored. She eked, she leaked beauty and sorrow, transcendence and metaphor to form the words of heart break, to spill light with blood before the great silence came.
Pulled by the weight of stone, the lights of a small galaxy sunk deep into stillness. As the lights extinguished, a maelstrom of pain, grief, fear, and rage consumed the galaxy in a descent into the black abyss. Alchemy of death, the muse’s mistress, the mother, lost gaping parts of her heart, her essence, her reason to be. The mother held only a shell of herself. Suspended in time, the shell floated in the deep, lifeless, fragile.
Moon phases and cycles marked months passing, capturing the mother’s gaze. Lunar lights infused the mother’s eyes and buoyed her up into the heavens—momentary flights—cleansing her sight with awe and comfort. Moon’s own mother face soothed the mother’s ravaged soul with tender knowing. She reminded the mother of soaring, of wonder, of unending beauty.
As Moon coursed the skies the mother fell, returning to the depths. Loss and death remained at work, seeping into the spaces of a rent heart. Beyond awareness, they forged a remaking in quiet persistence, a metamorphosis on the rise. The mother’s shell cracked, myriads of fissures splitting. Power stirred, leaking light, birthing strength. Fomenting, a new journey began to wake as the pull of muse beckoned. Muse drew the mother by her sweet whispers, her calm warmth, her pure glow.
Moth to flame.
Muse waits, for she knows the time of the story has come.