A poet wrote me today: your words shine
with a tinge of purple iridescence.

I held the door for a turquoise
faerie princess, or maybe she was a queen
in the foyer of Barnes and Noble. I ‘d just
left the eye doctor’s. My new glasses
perched on my nose, my eyes darting like
twin parakeets suddenly dumped from their cage.

On a day where there is a tinge of purple iridescence
in the air, and fairies flit the streets in rain,
it is only logical, a magical spell drives me into a bookstore,
that place of reading, with new eyes.

Perhaps to see a soul hovering the periphery
just over my shoulder as I leaf through a new book’s
crisp block, scents of ink and mystery tangible
as story crunches
between molars. I lick my lips and follow
faint patchouli
clouds spattered among the gray satin,
like a code or a trail
the two worlds are so close this day.

Rachael Ikins is a multiple Pushcart & CNY Book Award nominee, & 2018 Independent Book Award winner.

Author of 6 chapbooks, a full length collection, a fantasy & new mixed genre memoir. Her work appears worldwide in journals and anthologies. She is also a prize- winning visual artist. Her work appears on book covers and illustrations and has been hung in galleries from CNY to Albany, NY and in Washington, DC.

A writing consultant Ikins is a member of NLAPW and Associate Editor of Clare Songbirds Publishing House.