Lavina Blossom 

On Magritte’s The Flavor of Tears

Having prepared a plot on a cliff at the edge of the sea, a woman planted tears so rich they enticed a hawk to land.  Grief captured it and the bird became her garden to tend.  A worm fed on the hawk as it slept, making dark scars in its leaf-veined breast.  Its closed eye and rigid body—not what she intended, coming here. Thinking to make it light again, bring back its feathers, the girl made up whimsical names for the bird: “Fairinhigh” and “Dandeluff.”  She coaxed it to lift its wings, having discovered she had no taste any more for the fruit that weeping brings.

Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Belgium 

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