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A recorded reading of “Self-Portrait, Escaping”. If the player does not load, use the original audio source.
She has learned the old trick: stand still enough and someone will nail you into a likeness. A name. A role. A pretty silence squared off and levelled. So she lifts the frame herself. Not to fit inside it— not anymore— but to test its weight, the gilt rough under her fingers, the mitred corners pressing moons into her palms. Gold says: stay. Her hands say: look again. There is a portrait here, but it keeps refusing the wall. There is a woman here, but not for hanging. She carries the border like evidence, like an emptied cage, like a door carried off its hinges and still opening.
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