I keep her in a jar on my dusty desk, my muse. She was once a ballerina, another time, a mermaid, but she exists – for the moment – in the form of a widow, a black widow, in the center of a web, torn and tattered. I call her Walter because she hates it, as she hates me.
She feeds on stink bugs and little bits of my soul, swallowing my sorrows and spinning them into incoherent rhymes. The only thing she asks is that I obey her. Every. Last. Word. And she always has the last word. She also insists on having center stage.
She beckons and I come crawling, like an awkward infant seeking to suckle on her breast. And there we feed on each other, grateful….plump, our poetry ripe for picking. She is in the jar, but I am the prisoner, albeit more than willing and well fed, despite her disdain.
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