The Crowned Scarlet
The Abstract Station#1 - The narrator wrote this letter for the Crowned Scarlet 'Ivy'
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The narrator was lost within his dream.
The satin linens transformed into clouds of saccharine, drifting endlessly and drowning his senses. Beyond them, only a whisper from the outside world could still be heard.
He spoke:
The woman was named Ivy, though to some she had no name at all. She blossomed at dusk and withered before dawn. Her life was a constant battle between poverty and the desperate desire to become someone greater.
I listened to Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies No. 1 over and over again as I wrote this letter for her. The flowers I had picked the previous summer dried alongside her attention.
A Box at the Theater (At the Concert) Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
Ivy. Ivy. Ivy.
She was a contradiction unto herself.
“Nobody truly knew her. She was never that famous,” murmured a woman from the crowd.
But within her fantasies, she was the Crowned Scarlet.
I ardently admired the scent of her scarlet hair, those long and luscious waves she brushed before the mirror each night.
Once, I reached for those strands, tempted by their softness, yet they strangled me instead, leaving bruises across my skin.
Her sapphire eyes were sharp and mysterious, a contrast to mine, filled only with melancholy and longing.
The night dressed us for the ball.
I bowed before her and offered my head like a condemned man.
Ivy accepted the defeated creature I had become. She held me like an infant while quietly poisoning me with her heart.
Beneath the moonlight, the Crowned Scarlet raised the machete.
The clouds concealed the sky, a subtle mercy disguising despair.
That woman with the scarlet hair vanished alongside the ballet, dancing with nothing but lace upon her stride.
The crowd watched as the crows stripped flesh from bone.
I knelt only to yearn, to yearn for the Crowned Scarlet,
for her mercy would surely peel away whatever skin remained of me.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Thank you for reading this, I really appreciate your time.
Sincerely,
Mari