Navigating traffic on a blasé, writer’s block of a rainy day, Renetta drives in search of Grace, her muse. She could be in antiquities, hiding out in the Renaissance, or with the modernists, Renetta thinks before catching a glimpse of Grace descending the staircase with Picasso’s nude, demanding Renetta get naked with the rest of them.
“I want you as you are,” Grace says.
“Wrinkled, age-spotted, and grey?”
“Yes! Step out of the shadows,” Grace says. “Out of the illusion.”
Easy for her to say, Renetta thinks. She’s eternally young and beautiful.
Grace floats across the floor in a purple, gold-trimmed sari, with bronze skin and hair to her hips, speaking twelve languages without moving her lips. She assures Renetta she is wrapped in yards of silk; she too shimmers, despite—no, because of—her hearing loss and frozen shoulder. She, too, is eternal.
Renetta feasts from a table laden with Cézanne’s fruit. Dives into Hockney’s turquoise water and swims the strokes she’s spent a lifetime learning, effortless, gliding. She surfaces in India, land of the holy cows, ready to abandon the poverty of her fears; savors spices and warmth, rocks on the porch of liberation, lost in Pissarro’s infinite dots.
Sunlight peeks out from behind a cloud. The rain has stopped. The freeway is clear. Renetta glides across town, arrives home, and returns to her desk, grateful that Grace has given her something to say.
is an award-winning author of three books, most recently, Where Do You Hang Your Hammock? Finding Peace of Mind While You Write, Publish, and Promote Your Book. A devoted wordsmith and spiritual psychology practitioner, Bella facilitates online writing circles for writers, artists, healers, and seekers. Her work has appeared in The Sun Magazine, Lilith, Literary Mama, Calyx, The Dribble Drabble Review, and elsewhere. She’s currently working on an intergenerational family memoir in flash.
