Natalie found offbeat inspiration in a dragonfly
perched on a green-purple berry.
Here was a jumble of layers, swing slings, flapping sleeves
and appendages - a frenetic explosion of iridescent color
invested in one jacket wing.
But hers is a fashion world that does not wait,
Does not linger and buzz over private air marathons.
Her spring season is swept out to sea.

Her mortality depends on it,
her head above water - a green bobbing apple refusing to be
bitten off by the mouths of children and fish.
Her courage elapsing with the shallow, shadowed canyon tide.

Much like the day she sat with Irving on the subway.
Her fingers searched for his underneath the tweed fabric,
A cinematic orchestra, a dying, liquid romance seeping through
sensible gates locked and bolted by this fearful man.

But today -
Natalie has found her lustrous, luminous muse amongst the
casual berry satellites.
See the insect-beast?
There, flapping freely above a green monsoon meadow.
Here she has kissed the moth’s flame,
here is the world and all its continents scattered on
city streets and spilled into muddy rain gutters.
And here, she felt the split screen sadness of her own great divide.