The Real Prize by Rhiannon Gessaman
On the corner of a dusty town lived an old woman, with silky-silver hair that lunged past her shoulders, but which she kept tucked neatly in a bun that resembled iced cinnamon rolls. When she was a younger woman, her striking looks, complimented by her glacier-hued eyes, had taken her to exciting places- like beauty pageants, where she won runner-up on three occasions, and extravagant nights out in the bustling city, where she would politely poke around at fancy plates of Lemon Chicken Scallopini and sip through bubbles of Moet & Chandon. She was courted by the most handsome, successful eligible bachelors and promised a life of luxury; but this woman ran wild like an untamed Andalusian that refused to be harnessed.
The years slithered on quietly, snaking through the hourglass with the same ataraxia displayed by those mysterious particles of dust that dance in the arid blue above. One morning, the dazzling woman, with hair the color of a scarlet rose mallow, awoke to find that her vanity had betrayed her. In her reflection she saw not a youthful woman with carmine locks, but an old, wrinkled hag with baby’s breath sprouting from her follicles. That was the very moment that the woman’s youth departed, making way for the embodiment of the crone.
The saddened woman was regretful that she had never been tempered by the embrace of a burly man, yet she felt content in her autonomy. She wandered the halls of her cobblestone home, concerned with how to spend her last stash of temporal currency.
The woman vowed to find the passion that she kept stored away somewhere within the walls of her anatomy; the spirit that rises from ardor rather than the allure of youth and the promise of romantic enchantments. She read the poetry of Sylvia Plath and baked blueberry scones. She adopted a kitten and named her Persephone, after the goddess who reigns over the underworld- where the woman expected she would soon arrive. She danced under a crescent moon in the nude with lavender sprigs in her cotton coiffure. She planted sunsprite roses in the small garden behind her cottage, which blossomed full and lush through the endowment of time. She created her own nutritional potions and doused the soil with it, she sang to the little nubs at the end of the stems; and after years of tending to the little yellow buds, they had grown gargantuan, like black-eyed Susans with the confidence of sunflowers. The woman decided to enter them into the Royal Rosarian Rose Garden Contest, looking beyond any anxiety about whether she was good enough or deserving enough for such success. She was not youthful, nor was she any longer dazzling; but, her roses, which grew from the woman’s devotion, possessed the same glow that used to be found behind her eyes.
This time she won first place.
Author Biography:
Rhiannon is a writer and artist who lives in the mountains and spends too much of her time daydreaming. She straddles the lines between carefree and neurotic, cynical and magical, and she might believe in fairies. An enhanced range of vocabulary, emotional intelligence, and most importantly- the act of thinking before speaking.
