Pondering Similitude While Listening to “Palace of the Seven Jewels” by the Avery Sharpe Trio, by Joyce H. Munro

Caryatid in Genova, photo by Natasha (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Pondering Similitude While Listening to “Palace of the Seven Jewels” by the Avery Sharpe Trio

Once when Mom was bathing you in the kitchen sink at the house on Garrett Ave, she let me wash your hair (your little bit of fluff that, après-bath, Mom always caught up in a barrette smack on top of your head and all day your fluffy topknot would snicker at us as you crawled underfoot and teethed on chew beads and shook your plastic rattle with cacophonous glee). 

But as I lathered your downy head, the stingless shampoo must have stung because you scrunched up your eyes and kicked and screamed and then you shook your pudgy fists and splattered my face with soapy water. 

I blinked and your childhood vanished in the warp and weft of time. 

And now. Your kicking has turned to sauntering, your screaming to effortless vibrato and your fingers, slender and agile, glide across the keys. Amazing grace, long hoped for. Our parents had a daughter who grew into a corner stone, polished after the similitude of a palace. A living caryatid with curlicue slicked-down.
​

Joyce H. Munro

Joyce Munro’s work can be found in Broad Street Review, CIRCA, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Hippocampus, Minding Nature, Philadelphia Stories, The Copperfield Review, and elsewhere.