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Iron Works
1. She was an artist of things that most people took for granted -- patio furniture they left outside to rust through the winter, stair railings they climbed on with grass-stained shoes, park benches that blended in unnoticed among the more exciting trees, swing sets, and sandboxes. They just didn’t understand the artistic beauty of ornamental iron works.
2. College happened in the 80s -- a blur of techno-pop music, big hair, and neon pink. Alcohol and weed kept her grades below average, but didn’t prevent her from graduating with a degree in religion. A bachelor’s being useless, she landed a minimum wage job in the factory of Mueller Ornamental Iron Works, not minding the sweat and black dust, but figuring, like everyone, something better would come along.
3. Driving home from work yesterday, taking a detour because of a burst fire hydrant spouting a blast of water to the clouds, she passed a house with an intricate wrought-iron balcony. When she pulled into her driveway, the picture still projected in her mind. It stayed with her through her microwaved ravioli dinner, its curls and slopes twining around every thought. When she finally fell asleep it looped into her dreams.
4. Something better never came along. The shaped iron began to fascinate her -- that something so ordinary, elemental, could be transformed into art and still remain practical. She rented books from the library down the street from her apartment to learn the craft, knowing one day she would become an ornamental iron artist, but she would never submit her art to the rigid regularization of the Mueller assembly line.
5. Once she saw a birdcage, large enough to hold a human, filled with flowers and birdfeeders, in someone’s garden. The iron bars had sloped to the top, perfectly arching to end in a flourish of curls and iron flowers, like a fountain pouring out the top of that metal. She lost herself tracing the curves of that fountain and for those moments felt immortal.
6. This morning she woke up at four twenty-seven, still thinking of that balcony, She didn’t bother changing into clothes before returning to that house. She stood under the balcony in the hour before sunrise, when the sky is turning teal, staring up at those black bars, knowing if she could only touch those delicate flowers, twists, curls, all her dreams would come true. She grasped the aluminum drain pipe, so much more flimsy and primitive than iron, and began her climb.
7. That afternoon when she woke up in a hard bed, surrounded by cement walls, her head pounded and she looked around to find herself caged by tall iron bars with no decoration.
