History prefers its geniuses solemn.
Preferably male.
Preferably seated.
Preferably holding a cigar—
not a cigarello
between long red fingernails.
Instead—
a woman with hair like an emergency flare.
Tell me:
who approved that color?
Which committee of grey
signed off on scarlet?
She slips on grapes.
The floor does not conspire.
Gravity does what gravity has always done.
The miracle is timing.
A conveyor belt advances chocolates
toward frenzy.
She does not manage the machinery.
She collaborates with it.
Is this not a form of authorship?
To be devoured publicly
and still shape the rhythm?
Another spoonful.
The vowels lose confidence.
A nation repeats the error
faithfully.
Behind the laughter—
what?
A pen moving.
A contract reconsidered.
A chair dragged two inches closer to the head of the table.
Two inches is nothing.
Two inches is history.
The cigars call her difficult.
Smoke prefers obedience.
Fire prefers oxygen.
Which one endures?
The camera adored her.
Which is to say
it surrendered.
Or did she surrender first—
learning its angles,
its appetite,
the exact duration of a silence
before an audience inhales?
Meanwhile, another actress waits
in a hallway that smells faintly of carpet glue
and compromise.
How long has she been there?
Since childhood?
Since the first “maybe next time”?
Lucy opens the door.
The actress who had trimmed her ambition
to fit inside the cigars’ shadows
discovers a window.
Somewhere, years later,
a woman walks into a room
and does not think to apologize.
How does permission travel?
Through blood?
Through rumor?
Through reruns?
The grapes are now wine.
The pratfall loops.
The Martian is still loitering
on the windowsill.
Was she a clown?
An executive?
A wife staging chaos while drafting order?
Yes.
Is solemnity the only costume
genius may wear?
If so,
why did the room tilt
when she leaned?
She falls.
She rises.
The laughter echoes.
The chairs remain turned
toward hers.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Jill Szoo Wilson 