It reminds him of Malva and the way she carries music in the swing of her hips and plump sway of arms, this sculpture of a woman seated on a pedestal too small for the weighty bronze buttocks that overflow its surface and he swears he can hear Miles play in the way she balances on the edge of that pedestal, hands behind her head and leaning way back to hang in midair, easy as relaxing in a chair with no thought at all to gravity and its consequences, but you can bet that Mr. Maah-tees — you pronounce his name Maah-tees, the docent told him when he asked — knows a thing or two about women; why a man can die happy in the curve of those big arms and he thinks again of Malva, though he knows he shouldn't seeing as how he hardly knows her, she being new to the museum and all, not even two weeks working in the bookstore, but one day, he's going to ask her how's it going, does she like music, and isn't the museum the best job ever and maybe he'll tell her about the lady on the pedestal and maybe she'll understand and then, who knows what, but what he does know is that he'd better get on with his rounds to make sure no one touches the art and leave this lady to keeping her balance on that little pedestal.

Patrice Warrender is a retired computer graphics artist. She lives with her husband and two cats in the hills of Sebastopol, where the deer and the fox and the bobcat still play. Her poetry has appeared in RUNES, Moment of Creation Anthology, Poem, Poetica and other publications.