A sketch

    A third day of writing a sketch. I have no idea what to write. I know this can be done. I will put into practice what I tell my students for their freewrite journals: “Write anything, don’t care what it is, write, even if it is the Goober for two lines, just write.” So, here I am writing. I thought about a sketch of me, and then sketching out a grandchild, but it hasn’t inspired me. Well, a sketch of the tattoo that is on the mythical me for my upcoming story. Yes, that shall be done.

    She stands in a candlelit dance studio, lightening dancing through the sky. She is only in her skin colored, low-heeled dance shoes. The butterfly wings were completed but two hours ago, butterfly wings that have taken a little more than a year to complete. She has made herself madam butterfly. The wings begin at her ankles: the curl of the wing wraps around the ankle bone and rolls to the back of the leg, flaring slowly out with small jagged, caressing, edges. Those edges smoothly jet to the sides, but never completely around the leg, the outline of the design just visible to a person who may stand directly in front of her. At the back of the knee, the wing widens more, little do the jagged edges appear as the wing caresses into the curve of her inner and outer thigh, but never reaching the front of the leg. Upon reaching the buttocks, the division of the wings begin to meet between the each individual cheek, the coloring of the wings are a marbled-lining of deep blue hinted with silver, a light turquoise, and the deep blue of a lavender flower to this point. The colors become more defined upon the cheeks of the buttocks, as well as blending into each other more precisely into a pattern of chaos, of memorizing tranquility. Only if she leans over can a person witness the separation of the wings. At the bottom of the buttocks the wing wraps toward the front as it does from the top of the buttocks, taking in the entire hip, narrowing as the lower wing travels to just below the navel. The colors once again take on the pattern of marbling. The wing loops below the navel into the opposite lower wing, an intricate gathering that makes a low lined “V.” The upper wing begins above the navel.
    Just as the lower wings connect, the upper do as well, the “V” turned opening down. A diamond, laying on its side, encases the navel. Each wing pulls back in its elegant, intricate entanglement. Just a small area of the lower wing is hidden as the upper wing begins to widen. The top of the wing reaches the first two lower ribs before wrapping around the side to the back. The colors continue as they did before and after the buttocks, reaching around to the back, slowly edging up the shoulder, becoming jagged in areas as parts dart out, but not too far, never reaching around to the front again, the pattern hovering at the very edge of where arms lay at rest along the side. Not quite under the arm, heading towards the shoulders, the wing begins to narrow, the division of the wings in the center of the back visible again about three-fourths up from the waist. From this division a wing begins its movement up and over the shoulder—covering the curve of the shoulder and just hugging the neckline—where a wing plunges inward, slightly, narrowing greatly, until an inch from the areola to go around the darkened flesh but never entering the teat area. The wing ends with a small balled-hoop, just as the wings had connected above and below the navel.