Competition Twenty-One Shortlisted: Suffusion of Colour by Denise Bayes

St. Ives, Cornwall 1904

Grey. The delicate grey beneath a pigeon’s wing.

Romaine Brooks observes the array of pebbles plucked from the beach, back bent under stone clouds. Forms a silver circle beside her canvas.

She swirls together black and infinitesimal streaks of lead white pigment. Augments with flashes of umber, of ochre, the precise shades captured on the bristle tips.

Romaine glances out of her studio window at an expanse of steely waves.

Chatelet Theatre, Paris 1911

Cherry red velvet curtains swish open, revealing elaborate stage sets at the ballet.

And there she discovers Ida, a fragile goddess dancing to Debussy’s intimate music.

The tangle of love she feels for this angular beauty, watching the smooth ease of movement as Ida pirouettes across the stage and stretches en pointe. After the curtains tumble, after the applause has floated away, she makes love to Ida, raptured in a choreograph of elegant limbs.

Brooks’ Studio, Paris 1913

Romaine stops. Black fabric cloaks her lover’s body in the glass-lined room, high above the city. Her fingertips split the dark material, revealing the alabaster perfection beneath. She lifts her brush, ready to capture the essence of the woman she loves.

And Ida’s beauty pushes Romaine to the far edges of her palette and soon she is dabbing soft-hued pinks and brilliant vibrant blues, mixing the exact lavender hue of the blood pulsing through Ida’s veins.

Dizzied by this dazzle of colour, she looks away from Ida and out of the window, to the rain-grey clouds settled above the Seine.

She reflects on Ida’s dream of a farm, faraway. Together. A life Romaine knows she cannot share.

Loading a brush with white, Romaine dabs the ghost of a deer, alert, retreating into the shadows.

Denise Bayes has had flash and micros in NZ Micro Madness, Free Flash Fiction, Oxford Flash,100 Word Story, Ellipsis Zine, Firewords, 100 Word Project, Roi Fainéant press and The Centrifictionist.

@DeniseBayes      @deniseb.bsky.social

Image – Romaine Brooks – Self-Portrait [1923] via flickr.com

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