The Way of the White Petticoat

The Way of the White Petticoat
By: Jon Slone








I wanted to view life as a butterfly does.

So I climbed to the top of the world’s tallest waterfall in Venezuela.
And I set out for the loftiest steeple of splashy crag I could find.

A child set adrift in the deplorable drink, exhausted from looking at Picture Shows through potato sacks.

Through swells of rapturous hysteria, my countenance put-on an irrepressible smile, unlike any other it had ever donned before.
I guess it knew better, that which lay secret on the next page, and here I, the book.

Homesick, bruised and scraped-up pretty bad, I tumbled over into the lovely unknown like a jubbe of blissful beverage off an ancient breakfast table.


All at once, the pauper was made rich and the blind man could see.


A visual banquet unfurled before a pair of eyes what had never supped before.

Tears leapt from my wet cheeks like reckless rainbows.

I rifled through my word-suitcase only to find out I hadn’t packed a single thing.

An ailing world’s best kept secret was a destination of indescribable pulchritude.
And it and I were two opposite limbs of electrical discharge, screaming down a trackless swath, bound for one capstone of a hand shake.

The false coda and the authentic first chapter; two foes in one sleeping bag.

My jubilant heart tore from my suffocating person, like a kid at King's Island, and bade me to plummet faster.


In a startling turn of events, the mist-like deluge and the redoubtable escarpment became envious of a little crumb of dirt.


The Grand Canyon, jealous of a pot-hole.


There were no woebegone obstructions to crane a glance around. No intractable horizons in the yawning distance to ponder over, as to what further ambrosia may be tucked away like diffident duvets.

No more potato sacks, no more corrupted beauty, no more living on the frayed edges of the Big Picture.

Now I could see everything. And everything could see me.


And all of it was too much for a crumb of dirt, too great for a speck to know!


Colors blushed like the tip of a lit match, images were heart-stopping, fragrances became touchy-feely and my viscera wore perpetual goose bumps like a taut windbreaker.

My life had gone from nose-bleed to, no way!

The first remnants of an everlasting heaven had both hands cupped around my wrinkled-up, tear-stained face.

It too, bade me to hurry.

I was forlorn for some nebulous reason yet laughter had its way with me regardless.

The way of the White Petticoat had been slammed-up against my countenance worse than the clamorous and ubiquitous coil.


The shorter your time is at the fair, the sweeter the ride is on the merry-go-round.


For the first time, I could see as the butterfly. And it was a far cry better than plaques and playfellows to be certain.

Sickness in a second. Forever in a free-fall.


Awesome really.


The flame of forty Christmas’s had flickered out and with that, I was over.



Then I had just begun!





Jon TheJumper Slone