His harmonica is heavy, breathe in, breathe out, harmony, cacophony, restless, breathless, bravado. I can hear the low thrumming even after I leave the bar. I don’t know how to hear jazz, how to separate myself when I’ve left the room and the song is still soaking the whorls of my veins and my sockets. I told him I was taken after the shiraz was sent to my table, told you I was broken after the song she spun made me bleed there on the floor. I warned you of all the drama that comes with me, the sticky stories that make up a life. It was self-absorbed, and foolish, I saw in retrospect, to be so afraid I’d fail you, as if you didn’t have a web of your own.
Lorette C. Luzajic is a writer living in Toronto, Canada. She studied journalism at Ryerson University. She most often writes about art, and has a seven year column on Wine and Art pairings at Good Food Revolution. Her creative writing has appeared in several hundred journals and magazines online and in print, and about a dozen anthologies as well. She has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and one of her two works nominated for Best of the Net was a finalist. She is the author of five poetry books, including Pretty Time Machine, a collection of ekphrastic prose poems. Lorette is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a journal devoted entirely to literature inspired by visual art. She is also an award-winning visual artist, whose collage paintings are internationally collected and exhibited, and have appeared in galleries, museums, reality TV shows, billboards, magazine ads, and more. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.
© 2020, Lorette C. Luzajic
Halfway Down the Stairs 