The Darling Files 001 // “Stringing the Beads,” An Ekphrastic in Three Parts
This is the first edition of The Darling Files, a series in collaboration with Callie Feyen where we dig into essay snippets discarded during editing, poems once forgotten, journal entries unfinished.
Today, I share an Ekphrastic for a painting in my home that once belonged to my granny. I wrote the first two parts in a poetry class (with Callie!) and the last one was cobbled together from a journal pondering.
I. Stringing the Beads
Little is known of her life,
is what is said of the artist,*
the artist who painted just this one girl,
the girl who is Stringing the Beads.
Little is known of her life,
is what I wonder when I study the girl,
the girl who holds beads of every color,
but the color she strings is just blue.
Little is known of her life,
is what I think of my granny,
my granny who lived in dozens of homes,
homes where this painting would live.
Why just this painting?
Why only blue?
Why move so many times?
What did she want?
What did she wonder?
What was she trying to find?
Little is known of her life,
is what I consider about me,
the me that now wonders which one is she—
the granny, the artist, the girl, or all three.
*Note: The “little is known of her life” came from a Wikipedia source about the artist Sara Macgregor and her painting.
II. Stringing the Beads
When I close my eyes I can feel my Granny’s home.
Fancy trinkets, too delicate to touch.
Chicken and dumplings and cobbler and rosewater;
her songs about Jesus and love.
Every wall layered with paintings of people and places;
telling stories I didn’t know but imagined.
But the one I remember most was the girl in the chair;
the girl in the simple blue dress.
Her painting stood as tall as I, hugged
by a frame as strong as my granny.
She sits, knees bent, in her lap, a shallow basket of multicolored beads,
stringing bead after bead after bead.
The strand reaches the floor, curls around, out of frame,
how long, we do not know.
Each little bead that slides down the string
is always the same color blue.
What does she feel?
What does she want?
What is she trying to make?
I’ll never know because the girl doesn’t speak,
she just strings
and she strings
and she strings.
My granny, she moved, twenty seven times,
maybe more; after a while you start to lose count.
The blue house with the porch. The apartment with better light.
The basement and the town far away.
Each time she packed up her stories, her life,
took them to start something new.
Like the girl stringing beads in an infinite line,
there were many; but inside all the same.
What did she feel?
What did she want?
What was she trying to awake?
I’ll never know, because her dreams she never spoke.
She would only sing
and she would sing
and she would sing.
When I open my eyes it’s my home I see.
the same painting but now on my wall.
My granny, she moved, one final time
And now her stories, they live with me.
Like the girl and the granny, I string a life together too,
like beads, like homes; mine are words.
What do I feel?
What do I want?
What am I trying to create?
I don’t yet know; I’m still learning how to speak.
But I can dream,
and I can dream
and I can dream.
III. Stringing the Beads
She moved in a year ago
The girl with the blue beads.
Her frame is different, just a simple silhouette
now, letting the girl inside
be the better story.
I pass her every day. Same
girl, same beads, row after row after…
But wait.
There’s something
there, in her hand, I hadn’t seen before.
The bead, it’s not blue, not like the others.
It’s white.
Like the moon reflecting the daylight
to come.
Has she been ready all this time
to try something new?
Or is it just me that’s ready now
to notice?