It's Still Life

A Liturgy for the Hollow & the Heel

The Invocation

This is the hook on the polished stool,
the calling of lacquered light
and murmuring ghosts.

This is not emptiness,
this is a chamber.
The Bistro.
The Stiletto.
The Anchor.
The Hook of the Night.

The Invented Whisper.

Of Anchors and Architecture

This is sacred geometry.
This is waiting.
The black heel,
the spike of obsidian intention,
driven into the possibilities.

This is not hope.
This is sovereignty.
She is not adrift;
she is grounded in the act of anticipation.

And from this fixed point, she builds:
spinning from gin and on memory,
a fantasy, polishing his edges
until he shines with the impossible,

frictionless light that fits
in the hollow of her hand.

This is the construction of a companion
who asks for nothing but belief.

Of Laughter and Liars

Listen for the muffled laugh that works loose.
It is the sound of the inner voice,
the one she authored,
the one that knows the script,
the one leaning in.

Gin, that soft liar,
the willing accomplice,
rounding off the sharp corners,

of memory,
of vows that have grown dusty from lack
of rehearsal,
of interest.

But the smirk that follows
is truth.
Her flag.

It appears when the joke,
raw and filthy,
rises to the surface.

This is the doctrine revealed:
Her humour now sits closer to the bone.
It is the living marrow.
The vows are merely
the old, dead shell.

Of Hollows and Kin

Witness the haze.
She is not searching for a face,
but for a fellow bearer
of quiet.

Who else, in this cathedral
of buzz and chatter, holds
this same hollow silence beneath it all?

It is a silent communion she seeks:
the recognition of another
who has built a republic of one,

who dances with lions
in the private savanna of the mind.

The hollow is not a wound to be healed,
but a shared, sacred space,
the inner chamber where the real self,
where the laughing,
the snarling,
the waiting resides.

Of Names and Pauses

And then, the incantation.
A single, clean sound:

“…Brigid?”

A voice
performs its miracle.

It cuts the spell of her own making.
It does not break the fantasy,
but interrupts it
with the solid fact of her identity.

This is the final, sobering revelation:
Even lions, especially lions, must pause
when someone knows their name.

To be named is to be called,
momentarily,
out of the dance.

It is to be reminded that one exists,
solid and singular,
in the eye of another.

It is the crack in a self-made universe
where the real world,
bleeds through.

The Reveal

Carry your hollow silence
like a sacred vessel.

Polish your fantasies
to a blinding shine,

and cherish the jokes
that live close to the bone.

Anchor yourself
with your sharpest heel to whatever stool
will hold you.

And when a voice calls your name,
your true name,
from the real world,
let it give you pause.

For in that pause,
in that moment of recognition,
you are not alone.

You are simply,
profoundly,
seen.