Adele Elise Williams

Voyeuristic Intentions

Without the right light or proper build, a bird is barely beautiful.
Think Fibonacci. The golden hour. A bowl of actual ramen.

The devil is in the details. Pssshhhttt. The devil is in all beauty.
And it’s a rigged gig, a pious formula of fabrication.

Grind a Blue Jay feather into dust, it will only be blackened
crumb. No blue to be found. Structural Coloration —

and I wonder, what else becomes trash if not assembled divinely,
if not created in the image of shimmer?

To make visual pheromone. To yell with rude bright.
When I am in the dark I am soft and sad, but in the SUN

I am everything impossible. All my bits reflect and radiate out
in such a way that I am full on Baroque.

Think Alex Grey. Think Hiroshima. Think Genesis 1-3.
An entire absorbed brilliance at once.

Carefully remove blinding gypsum from my torso.
Tease tourmaline from my third eye.

Me in the right light with all the right parts looks like this:

Adele Elise Williams is a writer. She is the Nonfiction Editor for Gulf Coast, and her work can be found or is forthcoming in Guernica, Bear Review, Cream City Review, Quarterly West and Split Lip among others. IG = @sweetdeeee