Toni Scales

Painting the Walls in the Purple, Red, and Gold Tones of a Gilded Womb

after Elizabeth Bruno

After the breakdown, she tries to be Theda Bara, lines her eyes in Casati-black kohl and swoons on the scarlet chaise lounge.  Thinks she can catch a man with a white Sevres bowl, some pink Rainier cherries, and a silver baby spoon.  She wants the world shaped like a throat so she can swallow it whole.  Hangs dozens of polaroids, fires up the Victrola and prowls the house (the den of a sultana) in an indigo lace negligee, blue-black as a crow, peacock feathers catching in the flames of her corona hair.  A golden concoction of Godiva chocolates and Ciroc melts the regret from her tongue.  She paints her mouth a metallic copper and carries a charge, collects carafes and coffee urns, orders antique wrought iron bedposts and throws out everything without a story.  She knows light falls by seven p.m., can attest by frantic violet scribblings in the creamy vellum of an Oriental paper mache journal to the severity of how it fails.

Toni Scales works as a funeral director assistant in her native town of Corpus Christi, Texas. Currently, she is working towards her BA in English and Creative Writing at Texas A & M University. She enjoys Myspace, anything vintage, and mild self-destruction, like Starbucks and smoking too much. Her work has appeared in Lily, Wicked Alice, and The Pedestal Magazine.