Elegant Elora

Elora dances among the morning-glories. Her twisted legs bend, her feet find purchase in the dew-slickened grass, and she explodes into fine, precise movement. She twirls and spins, face raised to the morning sun as unseeing eyes shine.

It is then that Elora's elegance might begin to whisper, suggesting ghosts of her perception that never complete the journey from austere to fancy. Never quite.

Those ghosts are plastered in gray matter, trapped in sinew and tissue: Yet, somehow, they are freer than you or I or most any other creature. To be a ghost of Elora's perception is to have been kissed with instant, rapturous light. It leaves one cold when that moment becomes the next.

No comb has touched her hair; it remains as spider-sewn-silk. Always. No shoes bind her gnarled toes; they are unique in their grotesquery. Always. Her clothing clings to her body in tatters; she is naked in spirit. Always.

Beautiful Elora, with her arresting ravaged mind and her stunning misshapen body, is unaware of her elegance. If she thinks at all, she must believe herself to be gargoyle, gothic garden decoration at the least, rather than a cherub released without preparation from the safety of Shangri-la. She flounders and thrives at once.

Elora lives hidden in the garden, behind tall stone walls and locked gates. She is intimate with every inch of her space by touch, taste, smell. The cracks in the walls know her touch, her sentinel trees receive brushed on kisses and lingering hugs, the flowers reach for her light, ignoring the might of the sun, and the insects keep her company. Even the earth upon which she walks has slept in Elora's warmth.

And she dances--oh, does she dances--her body finding the only grace it will ever know. Unmindful of thorns or brambles or the nettle's sting, she moves constantly, lips that cannot form words incanting some divine wisdom that we will never know. From one motion to the next, Elora's elegance flows into a spinning, writhing, perfectly formed creation: A perpetual motion machine, shifting with elegance from one form to another, even in rest.

I watch her from the garden wall, but I visit with her, too. Sometimes we pick radishes for her to eat and wash them together under the spigot by the back door. When she smiles at me I can make myself believe that my sister, Elora, is happy in her garden.