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Never have I loved a woman more than the Lady in Blue.
Simple as she is, I adore her. Her poise physique, her effortless balance, and the sturdiness in her build shake me to my core. Mesmerizing is too dull a word to explain whatever it is I feel when I look upon her. Although her eyes are shifty, her gaze forever sideward, she captivates me with the eternal flame in her spirit. She is still and calm: graceful in all that she does.
Her thick, pink hands and bejeweled neck send tremors all throughout me; I feel almost unsafe in her presence, as though at any moment she could bring me to my knees in a cesspool of all that I feel for her. I am subject to her, docile and servile before her, ready to perform at her will. She amuses me, and perhaps she is the sole driving force in all that I do. She is paper, and I am flesh, but when I stand before her, she turns me to rubber.
I wish I could live with and within her. I wish so dearly that I could live within her confines, to be the couch beneath her, the portraits around her, the tiled walls behind her and the cool black beneath her feet. It's tormenting to have to step away from her to carry on with the humdrum of humdrum. How badly I wish I could bring her to me and bask in bliss with her for all eternity, bowing before her in exchange for even a shred of her acknowledgment.
The Lady in Blue may not love me, but I love her like I've spent my life with her.
I had first laid eyes upon the Lady in Blue in my undergrad years, flitting through a battered library copy of Sister Wendy's 1000 Masterpieces in my apartment bathtub. Outside the walls of the bathroom, my roommates engaged in some rather loud and potentially illegal activity. Like an underground Christian prior to its legalization in the fourth century, I hid from these monsters—dare I say, barbarians—, and studied in the confines of the quietest room available.
The Lady in Blue was at first just another image in print, glossy in my hands and heavy on my lap. It required a double take to truly acknowledge who stood before me. It was then when I felt the first tremor creep through me, sending static to my fingertips and numbness to my toes. It was blissful, and like the Reliquary of Sainte-Foy, I felt an immediate need to venerate the woman—the Lady, pardon me—I held in my arms.
Had she not been a page from the student library, I would have ripped her from her criminal binding with as little hesitation as Alexander the Great had before absolutely obliterating Darius III as depicted in the so-named mosaic, and kept her in my breast pocket for all eternity, so as she could always remain by my heart. Or maybe I would have pasted her to my bedroom wall, so as I could gaze upon her before I went to sleep each night. Oh, the things I could have done if that Lady in Blue were not someone else's property!
Beyond the obnoxiousness of my roommates only walls away from me, I could hear the distinct, grungy bustle of Manhattan from outside my apartment. I closed my eyes for a moment, my fingers tracing my Lady in Blue, and another burst of euphoria exploded within me like the sword piercing King Saul in the second-left window of the Chartres Cathedral. It were as if I could feel this humble Lady without having to look at her.
