Rose Beuret
“1864: Auguste Rodin meets
Rose Beuret in a candy shop.”

Crisp crinkles, enveloping sweet sap,
Lusty swirls in the lollipop,
Sweet delirium.

Sugar spun spider web hair
catching window’s light like flies who
wave gauzy bonjours.
Rosebuds sucking on hard sweets,
glances at the counter.

Forehead to forehead,
palms pressed against,
fingertips kiss and bend in prayer,
A cathedral.

Camille instigates a call to arms.
Rodin tries sleeping her away yet in his heart,
she holds an eternal spring
that will not stop flowing.

Rose tries to dam the spring and starve Rodin
like a Burgher of Calais,
yet like those burghers, he is released
while her snare is infinite.

She lives and dies for him,
her destiny is clay in his hands.

Savannah Dunbar is a writer, poet, singer, and public librarian. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.