Before his stylus touched the illumination, a wildfire rushed in through the door--a drastically fantastic natural disaster so searing it made him sweat, streaked his face with dirt, and flushed his cheeks. The bees donned heavy fire-proof reflective clothing and moved in on her as she sat down one seat in front and one row to the left of him. She turned around in her seat while the bees poured water on her chocolate-brown curls until she steamed.
"What did you think of the sonnets," she inquired of one of the bees.
"What d'ya mean 'What did I think'? They're Shakespeare. I liked them."
"How magniloquent of you. I mean, what did you think of the ones she assigned?"
"Oh, they're all the same, aren't they? Genius."
She cocked an eyebrow, and he could see a fire still scorching vacation homes and national forests and park-service stations in her eyes.
The pig-tailed girl turned to him, licking a popsicle, "Don't you agree, Becket?"
He heard his name as if underwater, but fire was flicking on her tongue.
" But Sonnet 116? As if we hadn't read and heard it into nimiety thanks to Sense and Sensibility. If he's such a genius, why don't we ever hear about the all the other sonnets?"
"That one is my favorite!"
He suddenly felt a heat wave as she turned towards him, freezing his spine into one long icicle. This time, the capsized ships remained motionless above the tempest; but her honeycomb lips twitched amusedly, swathed in nectar. The bees started buzzing again, but no one was speaking.
Bemusedly, "Is it really, or have you just never read anything else?"
The girl twisted her pig-tails around her finger, "What about, um, the...the 'my mistress' eyes...'?"
"Sonnet 130. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun? The one where he rhapsodizes about how unattractive his mistress is? All he's saying is 'You're ugly, but I love you anyway!'"
Suddenly, doves start flying from his mouth, "I think what he means is that she can't compare to any of those things--the sun, coral, and snow. She can't compare to angels or goddesses. He loves her when such comparisons fail, regardless that such comparisons fail because she is not beautiful. He loves her despite, even because of, her imperfections."
He feared the acerbic honey of her words, but the incisive dagger of her sarcasm stabbed his gut, "On whose side are you, Becket?"
In defense, he threw himself to the pavement and licked the dirt off her feet with an iron tongue, "If you're so familiar with Shakespeare then, which is your favorite?"
She flared with the new fan of oxygen, confidently, with shoulders to rival the Winged Nike, "Sonnet 65," she said with soft, milky words.
He raised one eyebrow with shocking skill, a reflex he couldn't help suppressing.
"Ooo," the girl chewed on her popsicle stick, cheeks sticky-pink, "which one is that?"
Her back the arch of a waning moon, her eyes sparklers in the hands of children on the Fourth of July--small vivid sparks of joy and excitement--the fire now a glowing hearth around which he could have raised a family, soft and warm. Lips of cream, breath of cinnamon and nutmeg, chocolate words--she recited:
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sand mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
In her taffeta-and-silk gown, pearls in her hair, signet ring in hand, the velvety curtain descended on her bowed head. The crowd applauded, shouting for an encore, but she took no bows; she made no curtain-call. She turned around in her seat, dress and all.
Yet the crowd wanted more, they wanted closure. "What does it mean," they inquired.
She doesn't give interviews, the night is late, and she wants to go home; but they love her, they cry. They want to know more. Make-up gone, hair devoid of pearls, now soft curls, she comes out in her robe, "It's about the ravages of time on love and life and how the author attempts to overcome mortality with his immortal writings. For this poet, disturbed by the deeds of Time, the written word was the only thing that could resist and even defeat time. " Then she closed her prayer book, rose from her knees, and left the cathedral with reverence.
