Seeing Madame Gherardi

 

Stripped of its leaves by the winter it was certainly anything but dazzling until the crystallization of the salt covered its black twigs with such a multitude of shining diamonds that only here and there can one still see the twigs as they really are.
-Stendhal

Hornbeam, water, salt,
and time. A pockmarked, brown hand.
Two eyes, flawed prisms.