Statuesque
Matt Bell


Because the father spoke to the younger only of her beauty, never her lessons, she read no books, only brushed her hair each morning with a thousand strokes of the brush; because he spoke of her as if she were a painting or a carving, every afternoon she abandoned her riding and dancing to practice sitting very still, thinking little, saying less, until she often appeared not even to blink or breathe. If later in life many remarked upon the mystery that she did not marry, it was perhaps in truth no mystery at all: the kingdom's many roving suitors simply could not find her inside the royal museum her father had built around her boudoir, its galleries stocked with marble figures almost as lovely as she but seemingly only half as still; and when the fading city of her father was finally sacked and she was carried off by lecherous raiders, know that it was not for her hand in marriage or for the possibility of ransom or even for terrors of the flesh. The raider chieftains had mistaken her for a life-sized bit of porcelain, a treasure white and alien-smooth but certainly not living, a blank prize more valuable than any captive they could have dreamed of, so regal, so barely a girl at all. When later they realized who she was, they did not regret their decision: how good she would look in their own halls, they thought, installed upon a dais, or better yet behind thick glass, where her beauty might safely be seen but never heard, in case she ever again decided to ruin herself with gesture and with speech.

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Matt Bell's most recent book is A TREE OR A PERSON OR A WALL. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Arizona State University.

Read Hannah Kauffman's 2 ½ Questions interview with Matt.

Detail of art on main page courtesy of Warm Fuzz.







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