First Word: Larissa Higgins: Rosebud

Rosebud lips are a winsome pout, a lowered eye, long lashes and a ‘becoming’ flush – always becoming, as if a woman were at her finest when sinking with bewilderment and confusion, all that dainty pulchritude covering up a mind that stopped, spaniel-like, at “Drrrr…. confused, me.  Vewwy hard, ‘dis 'ting.”   
            The dapper dude in his spats and lavender gloves couldn’t give a toss – all he wants is the engaging outward show. The inside is inside, lost to view.
            Fast-forward to bee-stung: brash and acid-like, vampish with black kohl smeared round her eyes for that fashionable hung-over look, and cornstarch for her green-faced, “late-night, wasn’t it?” pallor.  She might not have it all, but she’s gonna play it like she does – snapping gum and garters and that bold black eye doesn’t quiver for nobody.
           Francis Scott Fitzgerald adored women like these.  He immortalized them in carmine and lights as the brave new wave, but in a fit of enthusiasm he married one, and then his lavender gloves came out.  A man is what he was made and he was made too early for one like her.  The snap and spunk were treated to gaslights turned low, and an asylum when she didn’t bow, until the blush and confusion rose and held her, trapped in a cage of rosebuds.