all they’ve said about the painting is a lie‚ except my being a sphinx of
beauty. to think they’d ever
call me a vampire feels unbelievable‚ until you remember that I’ve been
dead more times than I’ve been alive. the truth remains, my
eyelashes had been plucked and fed to fishes. the untold story goes, they died. once‚
falling backwards into a sea was fun until I learned about
getting drowned. what I can say about being sneaked out of the Louvre is, it
has taught me more about impermanence than betrayal. I must say
inexpressibility was not a disease I suffered from. I loved being beautiful
just like the moon loved quietude. with
kneeling before repressed desires, I’m undoubtedly hopeless. I’m
learning how to be something softer than a work of art; that
my name wouldn’t have been my name, if you didn’t call me so.
never had virtuousness come to me easy. once, I said faith & waited for God to fall
out of my mouth. while sitting in a bulletproof glass, a woman
pelted a ceramic cup at me. I wondered if she’d rather offer me water to
quaff next time. I hear on the news that
roughly 1.7 million people are willing to pay
so much money to see my face. Leo, is it that
they do not know where my grave is?
usually, there’s always a man confessing his love to me but
Vinci‚ I fear I can’t love if it isn’t as much as you loved canvases. I fail
while trying to conjure ways to not feel
x-ed out of this generation. I struggle to smile when all I want is to
yawn my way out of this box. sometimes, I think of you a
zephyr‚ other times, a tornado.
(Editors’ Note: “Mona Lisa’s Abecedarian to Leonardo da Vinci” is read by Matt Peters on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 40B.)
© 2021 Abu Bakr Sadiq