Open the basket

Enter the game and play by the rules, you said.

Open the basket. Arms raise in a rainbow of welcome. Close the basket. Fingers clasp like bolts, unmoved by hearts beating against closed doors, pleading to be let in.

In a game where the number of doors is inversely proportional to the population of lost feet, the lucky ones find their place as queens in the fortress of her lovers' arms. Others become leftovers plucked out and replaced like unwanted fruit.

You watch us scramble for receptacles of our gifts. Baskets yawn as fruits yearn for validation of their sweetness. Disheartened dismay keeps the game  entertaining. Dejected minstrels chronicle casualties in song. Poets make an accounting of hurts. A bleeding painting is handed out as consolation prize. Losers are greeted by a cacophony of sighs.

The baskets open and close like an infant's hands. They are filled and emptied. Filled and emptied. In a cycle where gifts are ephemeral, where hands are left in a state of eternal want.

You, who hold the whistle. You, who command on whim. shuffling your feet, twiddling

your thumbs, entertained by obedience.

I lied.

Watch as I dance around baskets, a moth flitting close but never consumed. A gaze that lingers but never stays. Watch me elude hands longing to enclose the sweetest fruit always out of reach. Watch as I open baskets like oysters, liberate pearls from a sarcophagus of arms. Watch as I command hearts like a drum. Watch as I run. And I run and I run and I run and

I won.