Portrait #37
He is a porcelain doll writ large, too tall for grace and yet, it is all he possesses in every gesture and every motion. Even the way he eats cake is graceful, when the length of his limbs says it shouldn’t be anything but awkward. He carries the refined features and low brow of the German or Dutch, and sits in the common modern repose – face over laptop – but his bend is different. Perhaps it is the ghost of a smile that plays upon his perfect mouth as though his face could split open into laughter at any moment. Perhaps it is nothing more than that strange sense of “other” we pretend doesn’t exist, but is betrayed by our constant fascination. I let myself imagine that he is blissfully unaware of his outer beauty, so that when and if he ever looks up at another person, the smile he will surely gift will be innocent, for it is too tragic to think that such physical perfection corrupts the soul.
With love,