Hush- a bye

I never understood those mothers that treat their babies like they’re animals. They coo in ridiculously high voices and twirl they fingers in front of the baby’s face. Isn’t it simple courtesy to your baby to treat him human?

I don’t talk to him like I heard my mother talk to my sister those years ago, when I was an angry teenager with jagged hair and Mom kept wanting a new baby to have another chance. I sit him on my lap and I play with his cloudy curls and listen to him laugh and I talk to him ceaselessly, because I want him to grow up understanding his Mommy and why she cries at night and why she spits blood even when she tries to hide it, and why she holds him all the time.

“You know what that old woman who lives next door told me when she saw my belly? Oh yes, my belly. That was you, baby. You were in my belly. That’s what happens with babies and mommies. You were in my belly for a while because this is a scary, scary world, and you just had to get used to it because mommies can prepare you for everything. And then you come out and you know what to do because mommy already told you about how scary the world is. No, I was lying. Mommies can’t prepare you for everything. Some mommies just don’t want to, but Baby, I promise to teach you everything I know, even though it is very little. I promise not to lie anymore, alright? Because lying is a trademark of the world, and the more we lie, the more we resemble each other, and being like everyone else isn’t very good, is it? Oh, I never told you what Miss White Hair told me when she first saw you in my belly. She has these very blue eyes, baby. Maybe you can see her soon, and then you can tell me how blue they are. They’re so blue they’re almost invisible, and I bet you she saw through my belly and saw you sleeping inside and she knew what a good baby you will be. She told me, ‘Honey don’t worry. Babies are beautiful because they aren’t really people yet. For a while, all you will smell when you kiss your baby is milk and innocent sleep, and when he looks at you with his grey eyes he will only show you trust, and when he holds your hand it’ll be to make you happy, not to break your fingers with his anger. Love him, Honey, because he is too young to understand.’ Funny, she seemed to say it as though you would stop loving me when you grew up.”

Some things are very unfair, don’t you see? And some things are ironic, so ironic they become sickeningly painful. I still smell his scent on my pillow every time I put my head down, and I miss him, his warmth and the way we would lie in the bathtub together, looking at the cracked tiles on the ceiling like every little hole and splinter was a star. But he left, understand? And he never said a word. He didn’t take anything either, because I have checked the house too many hundreds of times and nothing was missing but him, and that was more than enough. I still remember him though. Why? I can’t throw out the pillow where the scent of his hair still lingers, and yet he left the house without a photograph. Ironic, isn’t it?

“This? This is my hand. This is my right hand, and you are holding it maybe because it has a pretty green ring on the one, two, third finger. Well, it isn’t really green. It’s chartreuse, maybe. Or viridian, or verdigris. So many names, right? Did you know that Eskimos have thirty two ways to say snow in their language? Or how Jews have even more funny ways to say jerk? I think I know some of them, because turns out Miss White Hair knows Yiddish. See how old she is? And the older you are, the wiser you are. Schmuck. Now there’s a funny one. Schmendrik. Putz. Schlepper. Hahaha, you’re laughing too? I knew you would find it funny. So when you grow up, instead of being mean and cursing at someone you don’t like, just call them a schmuck, and no one will argue. Anyway. Why can’t we have so many words for something? Imagine. We ran out of the creativity to create words so we have to reuse them to describe such different things and only cover it up with the excuse of ‘spelling’. And the Eskimos have the imagination to create thirty two names for snow! I feel ashamed. Do you feel ashamed? Maybe you can create new words. I used to do that when I was younger. I made up my own language but nobody understood me. Will you share your language with me? Please do. Mommy wants to know it.”

Sometimes, when I feel very ill, I am afraid for him. What will happen to him if I am gone? Really, I’m not afraid of dying, but what will happen to him if I disappear? I don’t want him to be taken care of by a mean Mommy who does not hold him all the time and stays by his crib at night to watch his dreams and chase away the nightmares with her breath. What if his new Mommy doesn’t like patting giggling bellies or smoothing little feet? And what if he forgets me? The scariest part about death is that people forget. They might promise to forever remember you, and of course, they do some of the time when something reminds them of you. But there are those little moments when something funny happens, or something beautiful, like a sunset, or a baby first learns how to walk, and people just have to forget. Then what happens to your soul?

“I promised not to lie, right? Well, baby, I didn’t want you at first. Please, please don’t hate me and understand me first. I was afraid. I was scared that I would not be a good mother, and of course, there were the selfish reasons. What will happen to my freedom? Haha, yes I am laughing now because I can’t believe I actually thought of something as stupid as that. Oh, stupid? That’s a not very nice word, honey, but you must as well know. It’s almost the same as schmuck. Yes, I was a schmuck once. I’m sorry. You know what made me think? One day, I was looking in the bathroom mirror and I was looking at my eyes, and I watched my pupils dance as I told myself truths and lies. That’s what pupils do, honey. They grow big and small if you lie to yourself. So, I told myself. ‘I don’t want a baby’. And they grew huuuuge! Yes, baby, laugh, they grew so big that my eyes turned black, and then they shrank and disappeared. That’s how I knew that I really wanted you.”

So much coughing. I try not to cough around him, but sometimes my throat just rips and pieces of my lungs fall out. He is such a good baby, so quiet, but I can tell he is afraid. I don’t want him to be afraid of me, but the meanness is ripping out my throat. I hold him and I let him watch me cry and he just holds my hair with his little hand, and I think about how much I love him.

“You like my hair, baby? I always put conditioner in it, to make it soft, and pretty. Like yours! Yes, just like yours. Oh, these on my cheek? These are called tears, baby. Tears come out when you cry. You cry when you’re sad. Or in your case, when you’re hungry, or sleepy, or nervous, or your pants are wet. Don’t worry. You’ll learn to talk soon. Oh, here comes another tear. Here, catch it! Don’t let it run away, or your wishes won’t come true. Why am I crying? I’m afraid, honey. But don’t worry about it. Things will get better. I promise. Oh, baby. I wish someone would have told me when I was like you that things will get better. But close your eyes, yes, sleep. I promise, things will get better.”

They took me into a screaming white truck with a metal bed and plastic sheets. I screamed for my baby, but they took him away, and promised that they would give him back. But promises are never kept. I coughed and I screamed until I coughed more than I screamed, and I knew that Miss White Hair had called them to take me away, because our walls were so thin and she heard me cough every time I sang to him or drank my tea or showered. I’m not mad at her. But I want it to end.

Hey, baby. Yes, I’m here. Don’t be afraid. Oh, no, don’t cry. Don’t be like me and spend your life crying. That never works, really. Smile, baby. Don’t be a schmuck like me. Yes, yes laugh! Always say that word and laugh, because that is what people really are and that is what your Mommy was. So, don’t cry alright? I promise it will get better, everything will be alright. My beautiful baby, you will touch my face again with your pretty little hands, and you will never feel my tears again, I promise. I just have to get better, and things will be okay. But for now, just keep smiling. Alright? Smile, smile, smile. I will always be here, and sometime soon we will talk again and I will tell you

Lay the bent to the bonnie broom

They lived with their mother by the North Sea Shore; Keir, named so for the raven hair that trailed to her waist, and Atle, her golden haired sister. They lived a peaceful life of only women by the bank of the lapping waves and singing fish; braiding each other’s hair before sleep and sharing a single bed, the jewelry of coral and shell on their thin wrists, and the veils of sea flowers sewn on their delicate dresses.

It was a stormy night the day the young man came to their home. The sky turned black with a quiet anger and bled streaks of white lightning that split the clouds and screaming waves as they crashed into sharpened rocks and coral and thrashed against unlucky rafts and floating nets. His name was Abner; a silently tall man with hair the color of shadows and ocean eyes. The girls were charmed by him and he by them, but there was something about the glance he gifted upon Atle, and Keir saw it and burned with a jealousy she never before had for her sister. He wooed the both of them as his stay extended; courted Kair with golden jewels and intricate delicacies from the land he ventured far from, until she sparkled like the diamonds on the bracelets themselves. But with Atle, he was subtler. He twisted sea flowers into ribbons that he braided into her sandy hair and admired her soft hands and blue eyes. He did give her one gift; a simple golden bracelet with words carved thinly on the sides in a secret language, which he slipped like a proposal onto her little wrist. That was the day the sky burned red with the bleeding sun and Keir watched them both with a silent rage, as the waves washed quietly on the shore and sighed at her anger.
~~~

“Sister, will you come with me?” Keir gently took her sister’s hand and led her through the door. “Let us stand together on the dock and watch the sailors as they set out to sea.” She smiled at Atle and the other girl nodded and gathered her skirts, and together they pranced along the sand filmed rocks to the mossy dock and stood side by side as the warm wind shifted their hair like gentle hands and cupped their chins with unseen fingers.

It was a moment of silence, that time of day in which everything stilled so that even a second lasted like an hour, and one is filled with a feeling of peace. A wave of thought clouded Keir’s darkly beautiful face, and in the instant that time slowed, she felt her arms break like dried clay from her thin sides and stretch like elastic toward her sister, frozen in that moment of stilled time, and give her a light push.

The silence shattered as the bright haired girl uttered a cry of surprise and fell into the dancing waves below the wooden boards of the dock, but not before she turned round and took her dark sister’s hand with her own, as she fell. Keir shook her off, and as her sister crashed into the waves she felt the golden bracelet slip into her cruel hands. Time came rushing back to make up for the moments it lost as it slept, and Keir watched her sister gasp and flail beneath the strong arms of the waves, her flowery dress weighing her down as it ate the water greedily and trapped her legs as they ran with no footing.
“Sister!” Atle cried. “Keir, let me live!” She coughed at the water and slapped the waves with her weak hands. “Reach to me your hand! I swear, all I have I will give!”

At this Keir smiled. “It is your Abner I will have and more. But thou shalt never come ashore.” She tried to turn away but could not. Atle sank below the waves as they engulfed her and then arose again, like a bird searching for its food below the water. Keir waited until her sister lost the fight and floated like a swan atop the calming waves, her dark blonde hair fanned out in the water and her skirts opened like a multicolored lily. Only then she left, but with something tugging at her heart.

~~~
Keir came home without her sister and sobbed out her treacherous tale to her mother and the anxious Abner; of Atle slipping on the foamy moss of the wooden boards and falling into the murky depths below, and he ran to search for her, not leaving the shore for days, searching under the thick rays of the golden sun and mourning under the silent shadows of the gray moon. On the fifth day, the sea took pity on the child it helped kill and gently pushed her bones to the shore, where they washed up on the sandy banks of the other side of the town. Two gypsy boys had been walking along the strand of running water, and saw Atle’s bones as they came ashore. They slid down the muddy bank and watched the smooth bones as they sparkled under the sand, and the golden hair that shone like the sun. They made a harp of her elegantly curved ribcage, and wove several locks of her yellow hair round the thin bones, creating an instrument that could melt a heart of any stone, and turn a bird to ice with jealousy. On that day, the grieving Abner proposed to Keir with the golden bracelet Atle had cherished, and they were to be married the next day. The gypsy boys were invited to play their harp at the wedding; as it had become famous overnight in its rarity and the delicate notes it sang under their dark fingers.

The minstrels came to the hall in which the ceremony was held and when called for, stood at the front and placed the harp on a slab of stone. But before they even began to play, the golden strings shimmered like a ghost and let out a doleful sound, that brought sorrow into every heart that heard. The first string sang as the assembly watched; “Oh, sister, why have you treated me so?” And the dark haired bride leapt from her chair with a cry of terror she hid behind her hand. The second string, louder, echoed round the room, “I promised to give you all I owned, Sister, why did you not save me?” Keir backed against the wall and tore her dress with her hands as she moaned, “no, no...” Abner fell to his knees beside the harp and their mother, oh their poor mother, gasped as she heard her dead daughters voice escape from the shining strings of the little harp. The third and final string rang the loudest as the people assembled wondered aloud at the scene before them, “And now you will beg me to save you from the darkness of the dancing waves, and surely now your tears will flow.”

Keir ripped herself from the wall and ran to the dock at the edge of the shore and jumped into the waves and drowned as they pulled her down. The gypsy boys stared in wonder at their little harp, but once again before they moved to touch the instrument, it shimmered as three more strands of hair wrapped themselves round the smooth bones; three gleaming strands black as a raven’s feather.

Oldoldold

Birthday today. I don't feel any different but I hear you're supposed to feel older.
-little dance-

Same eyes

One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.

"Tell me something, my friend. You ever dance with the devil by the pale moonlight?" - The Joker, "Batman" (1989)

"Man is born crying. When he has cried enough, he dies." - Kyoami, "Ran" (1985)

"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend." - Red, "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994)

"I met Death today. We are playing chess." - Antonius Block, "The Seventh Seal" (1957)


Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again. -Antoine de saint-exupery "The Little Prince"

Sometimes, I guess there's just not enough rocks. - Forrest Gump, "Forrest Gump" (1994)

The question is not whether I've treated you rudely but whether you've ever heard me treat anyone else better. - Professor Henry Higgins, "My Fair Lady" (1964)

She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes." - Norman Bates, "Psycho" (1960)

"At my signal, unleash Hell." - Maximus, "Gladiator" (2000)

I was of the opinion that the past is past, and like all that is not now it should remain buried along the side of our memories. -Alex "Everything is Illuminated"

That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it's because you're truly a wise man.

"I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same." - Guido Anselmi, "8 1/2" (1963)

"Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father: prepare to die." - Inigo Montoya, "The Princess Bride" (1987)

"Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice." - Madeleine Elster, "Vertigo" (1958)

A story like mine should never be told. For my world is as forbidden as it is fragile. Without its mysteries it cannot survive. -Sayuri "Memoirs of a Geisha"

If I ever had to choose between my country and my friend, I hope I would be brave enough to choose my friend.

“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because people do evil, but because people sit by and let them.” -Albert Einstein

But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best. -Marilyn Manson

Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper. -Sayuri "Memoirs of a Geisha"

I met Death today. We played chess.

At the temple, there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read Loss, only feel it.

Children aren't supposed to die.

“Miss.”
She pulls at my sleeve with her baby hands. She is little, with blue December eyes and an old- lady frown. “Miss.”
“Yes?”
“Are angels real?”
I can’t answer. I wrap my arms around me and let the smell of the church envelope my face. I breathe in the dancing candles and the sorrow of the trembling figures shrouded in black. The priest’s soft fingers as they caress dusty pages, the dirty red carpet as the little girl stomps with her lively boot like a pony.
She is persistent.
“What do they look like?”
I shrug. The little boys standing by the doors in their cream silk robes emit a sudden wave of thin sound. Their shoulders shrug with mine as they breathe in simultaneously and let the song tumble out. I avoid her question, so I think.

A solis ortus cardine

Adusque terrae limitem

Christum canamus Principem,

Natum Maria Virgine.

Latin. They’re singing in Latin.
The little girl sighs and slumps down to the floor, leaning against a polished stone bench.
“Why do they make the carpets red?” Her hands curl like an eagle’s and I watch her silently. “I get blue, or green, but why red?”

Deum de Deo,

lumen de lumine,

Parturit virgo mater,

Deum verum, genitum, non factum.

“She was my sister.” She gazes at the procession and I bite my lip.

“How come angels forget?” I twist my fingers nervously and hide my eyes behind my hair. Surely I must reprimand her. Tell her she is wrong, angels never forget. After all, she is so small. Only a baby.

But she is an adult now. Pain already stains her little face like a coffee splash on a puppy. And how can I tell her she is wrong, how can I contradict her, when the coffin is so, so small?

असतो मा सद्गमय

I've been an athiest practically all my life and suddenly becoming religious is a little.. scary.
My best friend taught me about the prayers and chants. I've only memorized the Meditation On Lord Shiva; and trust me, learning a new language so unlike the languages I have grown up around is like putting a sparrow in nest of cranes. Trust me, it's dizzying.

It's beautiful though, I think.

Shaantam padmaasanastham shashadharamakutam panchavaktram trinetram,Shoolam vajram cha khadgam parashumabhayadam dakshinaange vahantam;Naagam paasham cha ghantaam damaruka sahitam chaankusham vaamabhaage,Naanaalankaara deeptam sphatika maninibham paarvateesham namaami.

I never figured out what it is about religion that has so many people at its feet, and what it is about people that makes them believe that their god or gods are (is?) the god(s). I have to say, it's a trying philosophy. I've never allowed myself to dedicate myself to anyone or anything, and here I am, bowing in front of a brass statue on my mantle.

The gods work in wondrous ways, I hear.

You cannot read Loss, only feel it.

The day it happened, I had no idea. Simple as that.
I woke at 7:03, and shaved for the first time in eleven days, put on my old jeans with the tear running through the left knee and the new shirt you bought for my birthday because you thought I had no reasonable ones.

Then Guinevere called and yelped out what happened in a tear- stained voice. You know what hurt the most? I didn't even know you were dead. Isn’t that ridiculous? I think it is.

***

The air inside of the cafe is thick and warm and a drizzle powders the greasy window beside my seat. She is looking at me, glancing up once in a while from a newspaper stained grey with rain. Her hair is white, but not old white. It's long and glossy, trailing down at her shoulders and disappearing behind the plastic red of the table. Some of it is trapped between her fingers and licks at the water from the newspaper. Her eyes are covered behind a thin layer of bangs, but her lips, slightly parted and stained with cherry color; show a neat row of teeth like her hair.

She looks at me again and her eyes gleam a dark green.

I feel myself blush and turn away; watching two droplets race down the murky glass. They merge as one towards the end and speed to the finish line together. Rain is overrated. It's just water.

"Hey."

I start. My eyes dart everywhere, but the sound definitely came from her. "Huh?"

"Hey." She blinks. "I said hey. Like, greeting-wise. You know, aloha?" Her hands glide through the air to emphasize.

"Um. Hey."

She creeps to the edge of her seat and smiles, shaking the newspaper. "What's your name?"

"Jerome."

"Jerome. I'm Shalott. Don't laugh at the name."

"What's bad about the name?"

"It sounds like an old Southern woman screaming Charlotte when people read it aloud. They don't know you have to pronounce it Shyah- Lot." She says 'pronounce' weird. Prununce.

"Well, now I know, Shyah- Lot." She smiles at me. "What language is the newspaper in?"

"Oh." She twists the paper between her fingers. "Swedish. Oh, I don't understand it, don't get me wrong. I just like looking at the letters." I feel myself melt as she smiles again.

***

We were lying on your bed underneath the silky mosquito net, your hair draped over my arm and sparkling under the window. Your eyes were closed; lashes trembled. I shifted and blew into the caramel curlicue of your ear and you scrunched up your face like a rabbit and wrapped your hand around my chin. I laughed. You laughed too.

"Have you ever heard about the Lady of Shalott?" I played with the edge of your lilac shirt and shook my head. Lilac looks pretty with white.

"It's a sad story." You sighed. "My mother loved sad stories and old myths. My sister's name is Guinevere, like King Arthur's wife."

"You have a sister?"

"It is a poem, The Lady of Shalott. By Alfred Lord Tennyson." You sang out the name like a first grader memorizing the alphabet. You didn't say anymore and I closed my eyes, drifting to sleep.

"Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle embowers
The Lady of Shalott."

"It's beautiful." I glided my hands down your taut stomach.
"It's long." You wrapped your hair like a honeycomb around your fist and floated it above your face, your forehead furrowed. I don't know if you were talking about your hair or the story.

“There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott."

"I don't remember much else." You sounded sad. "I just know that she dies in the end."

"Everyone dies in the end, Lottie."

"She dies young. She leaves her tower and her curse is a slow death. Why would my mother name me after a woman that was doomed to die?"

"Why did she leave?"

"He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot. "

You smoothed your hand through my hair. "She fell in love."

***

We were so opposite each other that we became alike in our controversies. I didn't like movies with a lot of death in them, but you loved them. I would scold you with disgust as you watched a bloody battle; I called you cold- hearted and cruel and you bit back that I was a wimp and tolerating death was just another way of understanding it. It's true, now I know. I'm sorry for scolding you.

Whenever we would walk and you found a dead insect curled up on the floor you would yelp and delicately cup your palm and drop the dried body into it, then run to bury it. I crunched on dead cicadas when they came out and sang because fragile things scared me. When I was younger, I pulled apart the delicate wings of butterflies and cried when their colorful powder rubbed onto my palms and made my fingers a rainbow.

I told you all of the little things about me; the rib I broke when I showed my brother I could fly and jumped off the couch (you laughed at that one), the wrist I sprained the first and last time I tried to break-dance. I showed you the mysterious streak of blonde hidden underneath my dark brown hair and the skull tattoo on the small of my back that my father found, before he locked me out of the house for three and a half days. You told me that you liked words like "milk" and "slope" and "eradicate" and that you liked walking round the house in one sock and mini shorts and oversized shirts. You liked airbrushed tattoos because you liked variety, and you lit candles because they made you hope and your middle name was Sevya. You hated roses because they were cliché. You loved melted wax but you hated when it dried on the tips of your fingers because it made you feel trapped.

***
I'm dreaming. This is after she died. I am hiking through the woods with her and we silently choose a fallen tree and climb on top of it like we're horseback riding. Her hair is in braids and she is wearing a purple shirt with a sun on it, and red knee length shorts. I stare at the leaves and the muddy orange and ochre mixture.

"Why did you do it?" My voice breaks the stillness of the forest and I feel alone, so so alone. I look and she blinks her pretty green eyes at me, like a cat.

"Daw, honey, you know me." She smiles apologetically and raises her hands high in an animated shrug. "I'm... impulsive. You can't stop me... once I get started."

"But why couldn't you think it through, just a little? I mean, I... love you."

"I love you too, Jerry, I do. I'm sorry, really." She frowns. "But hey! You see me now."

"It's a dream."

"So? You can still see me. You know, you should go for someone else, now, I really won't be mad. If you won't, I'll keep poking your back at night and you'll hate me for it."

"This isn't funny, Lottie. You know I could never hate you."

"Well you will." She picks up a bunch of leaves in her hands and throws them in the air. "And you can get mad at me too, honey. I would. Now go. Oh, and tell Guenny hi."

I shake my head and reach for her, but she moves back and I fall into a pillow of leaves. She laughs, and everything turns black.

***

"Let's go catch fireflies." She pulled at my hand with her cool fingers and smiled at me. "Come on, Jerry, let's go catch fireflies."

"It's January!" I laughed at her eagerness and she slumped against me.

"So?"

I wrapped my fingers round a silky tube of silver hair. "You're so impulsive."

Her olive skin broke into a smooth rift of white pearls and thin pink ribbons. "That's me!" She sang. "Shalott the impulsive, Shalott the one- socked, Shaaaaaaaaalott- the firefly."

She made a song about everything.

"So how do you propose we catch fireflies?"

"Oh!" She took my hand and led me to her bedroom, with the wispy mosquito curtain dancing at her bed and the Urdu music softly streaming from a player in a shelf. Figurines of little creatures glittering under silver dust lay scattered among the shelves and books on mythology and abstract painters. Her hands, gloved in striped stockings, wrapped around four clear candle tubes and she plunked them onto the table. She grabbed two little ones from the highest shelf and one shaped like a lion from a rolling cabinet. She fumbled through her pockets, then mine, under her pillow, and finally under the mattress; where she took out a little green lighter. She took it, winked, pressed the button, and blinked as the flame flew out. A minute later, each candle stood gleaming.

"There." She spread out her arms like an invite to see a kingdom. "Behold. Fireflies."

I laughed and enveloped her waist with an arm and pulled her to the wall. The fireflies danced as we kissed.

***

There was an argument. Of course there was an argument.

We were sitting cross- legged on your bed, again. Your hands were cupped in your palms and a grim expression crossed your face like a cloud. I wanted to cheer you up, that's all.

"A smile is a curve that sets everything straight." I ran my thumb down your lips. "Smile."

You turned away. "My smile is a straight line." Defiant, like a child.

"Well, maybe I was asking you to smile normal." You looked up fast and I quickly regretted it. "Why do I always have to smile?" You unfolded your legs like a swan landing in water and leaped from the bed. "Why the hell do I always have to smile?" I stood up and approached you gingerly, like to a wounded wild animal. "I didn't mean any harm, Lottie, I-"

"Don't call me that! Everybody always calls me something other than my real name! My name is Shalott, Shyah- Lot!" You pronounced ‘everybody’ weird. Everybawdie.

I touched your elbow; you pulled away as if my fingers stung your flesh.

"You came home drunk last night." I accused. "You're having a hangover or something. Snap out of it."

"You're just jealous." You narrowed your eyes like an angry dog. "You think I'm fucking around with other guys, don't you? Here you are, sitting like a grandma eating Chinese food and reading; what is this, Of Mice and fucking Men, wondering, 'where oh where is Lottie'?" I was so angry.

“Who would fuck around with you anyway? With your... impulsive outbursts and weird ideas and fucking baby attitude."

You froze. Your voice turned to steel. "I warned you you would misunderstand me. I warned you I'd get tired of you and this would turn to shit." And you spun on your sock and ran to the bathroom, locking the door.

I wasn't angry anymore. I tiptoed to the bathroom and knocked lightly on the door. No sound came out of it. I knocked a little louder, but you didn't answer and I gave up. I crept to the armchair by the front door and took my coat and wrapped it around my arm. I craned my neck to the cream colored wall behind which the bathroom hid, but you didn't appear. I opened the door and walked out.

***

I called her and she answered. We were silent for a little while, but I knew she was there with her olive green phone, waiting.

"I'm sorry." I breathed.
"Me too." She sighed.
Silence.
"You didn't mean what you said, when you said all those things, did you?" I offered.
"No. No, honey I didn't."
Silence.
"Did you mean what you said about my impulsive outbursts and all?"
"No, baby. I was mad."
Silence.
"Do you think I'm pretty?"
"I think you're beautiful."
"You told me that beautiful scares you."
"Not your beautiful. Your beautiful makes me happy."
"I think I want to dye my hair again. White is starting to get boring, don't you think? Purple sounds good, doesn't it?"
"Yes, it does. Lilac is very pretty."

I heard her shift and my fingers tapped against the polished arm of my chair. I thought about the summer coming soon and soft rains and carnivals and warmth, I don't like carnivals because there are too many people and too much noise and color and light. But I like the sound of them.

"Maybe we could go to a carnival sometime." I offered because I knew it wouldn't happen anyway. Something in me just knew. "I could try winning you a toy and we could go on the Ferris wheel and kiss with cotton candy in our mouths and ride the big horses, and..."

"Sounds nice." Nice. She hated nice.

"I memorized some of the poem." I let my smile enter my words.

"But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights a-"

She laughed. I laughed too.

"Look, baby, I'm gonna go sleep. You were right, I shouldn't have been drinking; I'm really sorry. I love you. Call me tomorrow, will you? It would be... nice."

"Alright. I love you."

Click.

***

I park my car by the cemetery and sit still and stare. You never dyed your hair purple. Maybe you never wanted to, anyway. Maybe it was just a way to make me stop worrying.

Guinevere pulls up behind me and I open the door and get out. Her eyes are pink and she is alone.

The funeral is small. A few friends, a few crying aunts. The priest is distracted by something else, an upcoming wedding, probably. A baptism. We listen to the end of his prayer, he slaps his little book closed, we scatter the casket with moist soil.

As everybody leaves, I step behind Guenny and smooth her shoulders with my hands. She shudders a bit, but lets me. A after a while, she pats my hand gently and walks away. I step closer to the casket and crouch down.

"My impulsive Lottie." I smile. "My stupid, impulsive little Lottie." My fingers play with the soil and my smile fumbles as the wind picks at my hair.

Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”

I would like to know about every kind of dance.

The girl in front of me in the line is laughing. Her head is tilted back and her red- ribbon mouth is open wide enough to eat the sun, swallow the clouds and everyone else in the line, me included. Her boyfriend is grinning at her, his left hand wrapped protectively around her chubby manicured one, his hip placed lightly against her in a stance screaming “she’s mine.”
The line is long. I count twenty two people in front of me and thirteen in back. At the side by the chain- link fence, a crying teenager stomps her feet and wipes the nervous sweat from her forehead as her friends plead with her and pat her back and matted black hair. This roller coaster seems to be the most intense one, with more spins and loops than the strand of DNA my brother has been studying for more than two months in his biology class. The girl in front keeps laughing, her boyfriend spins thin streams of her hair into blonde tubes, and my shoes are rubbing sharply into the sore spots on my ankles.
The sleepy man sitting at the booth in front of the line suddenly stands up, rubs his eyes, and fumbles with the rusty hook on the chained gate. The girl in front jumps up and down and wraps her arms round her boyfriend like a bear embracing a honeycomb. The ground vibrates as the corroded white wagons of the coaster slow to a snail pace in front of the sleepy man’s booth. The line wakes and trembles like an oversized caterpillar from a year long nap, and inches slowly towards the large wagon.

People seem to let themselves go on roller coasters. The most reserved person suddenly decides to lift his arms into the skirts of the clouds and whoop his lungs out until he loses his voice. You’re at one with the sky, with the wind that grabs at your hair and pulls your lips back and makes it feel like you’re swallowing your heart over and over and over again. I grab the rusty bars pushing into my chest and throw my head back to feel my hair bite my shoulders. My eyes are tearing and my lips feel like pebbles in the Sahara, smooth and pale, perpetually untouched by water. I can smell the anticipated anxiety of the people around me, watch from the corner of my eye as the blonde girl grabs her boyfriends arm and digs her face into his muscled shoulder. We climb slowly up, the pressure slapping bricks onto my ribcage until I feel ready to explode, and then plummet down, down, down, my stomach hanging onto my teeth for dear life and my throat vibrating with my scream as it rips out like a bullet from a gun.

Meet Zakura Berkova, my half Japanese half Bulgarian best friend of almost six years. A claustrophobic, she likes old silk curtains and collecting pictures of mothers that she glues in a scrapbook under her bed. She hates the color yellow and sleeps with her pillow over her head. She has races in the hallway with her dog and taught her parrot how to dance in less than a week using crackers and blue string. She loves to braid my hair.
We’re sitting at the farthest table in Burkley’s Soup Café and she’s telling me something.

Scratch that; signing. We’re deaf.

“Are you going then?” Her hands dance lighting speed in the air as she mouths her words. I glance sideways at her fingers and then the people passing. A women with short red hair flaying her hips in a tight black business skirt gives Zakura the Look, the “oh, the poor thing” expression before her face turns back to stone and she turns the corner. A man walking his dog appears from the opposite direction, a tall paper cup of coffee clenched in his free hand, the long blue veins in his arm outlined amid the scattering of gray hair on his skin. He doesn’t look at us.
Meet me, Nayemi Taylor. I like masks, purple hair, gliding my fingers over marbles and regret my nose ring. I like life stories and coffee at four in the morning and have never been kissed. I like watching rain racing down windows and never getting off busses until I land in the middle of nowhere. My cat’s name is Nnena and she likes sleeping under lamps and the color green.
Zakura punches my shoulder. “Ney, will you listen to me?” Her fingers are irritated as well. I focus my eyes to look at her. “Luka invited us to a party, I told him yes. You’re going too.” Her fingers are fascinating, like Medusa’s hair, with a life of their own. She wants a reply.
“Won’t we be strange?” My hands surprise me sometimes. I never think for them to move, they do it alone. “Or is this a party for deaf people?”
Zakura frowns. “We’re not freaks, Ney. Just because we can’t hear the music doesn’t mean we’re not hot like all the other girls.” She smiles when I roll my eyes and taps my nose with her spoon. “Try it out. People can be nice sometimes.” I shake my head but it’s so subtle I don’t think she notices. I barely notice. “Broden. I have to take care of him. Dad’s coming home late tonight.” Meet Broden, my baby brother. He’s normal and has freckles, wants a girlfriend but is scared of his own shadow. He likes collecting junk on beaches and hates it when girls in movies say love phrases before kissing.
“Broden is thirteen, Ney. He doesn’t need a babysitter.” It’s settled. I can’t say no. Whatever I say will be somehow solved or pushed aside by Zakura. My fate is sealed.
Zakura reads the submission on my face and smiles. “I’ll pick you up at six.”

I’m scared at home while I change. I’m scared in the car while we drive. I’m scared as we clomp in our heels to the vibrating black doors of the club. I’m in a denim black miniskirt and strapless black tank top with black roman heels. Zakura is in a tight purple dress stopping halfway down her thighs. Her heels are golden. She looks confident. Her eyes smile at me as she opens her mouth and her throat ripples with her scream. She opens the door, and we’re bathed in blinding white light, arms and smoke are pulling us inside, shutting the doors closed, and we’re in a psychedelic wonderland. The music is louder when you feel it. It controls my heart and makes it beat with the synchronized rhythm of the computer, my bones rattling with each vibration of sound. People are jumping, thrashing their heads and throwing their arms up in the air. Two girls dressed in barely visible bikinis slither like pale pythons round the DJ, gliding their hands down his chest, wrapping their legs around his. In the darker corners behind the bar, piles of stoned people giggle with each other and trace their fingers in the thick blue smoke above their heads. The balding barman is breaking up a fight between two drunken boys pointing fingers at each other. His mouth is twisted in a growling grimace as the muscles clench under his yellowed dress shirt. Zakura is gone. The glittering balls above my head twirl slowly and bring a cascade of flashing lights on the floor, making it move. Someone grabs onto my waist, another hand smoothes itself down my ass. I prance away as someone steps on my foot and an elbow knocks itself into my ribcage. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m a freak, a disabled weirdo. Everything about me doesn’t belong, but I feel my body molding itself into the vibrating rhythm of the music, synchronizing itself so I feel like this is how I’ve been moving my whole life, in a slow- motion wiggle with each limb moving away from the other.

A boy appears out of nowhere. He smiles down at me and says something and I smile and nod at him. We’re all deaf here; I might as well pretend. He takes my elbow in one hand and my waist in the other and gets behind me, rubbing his crotch against my back. I feel disgusted and then another feeling entirely overwhelms me, and I press back and follow his movements, my arms outstretched. The lights are flickering, black and white, black and white. Everything looks slow-motion, everyone’s breathing lasts a hundred minutes, the pounding of every heart throbs together slower than a snail. My shirt is slipping. I feel cold sweat trickling between my breasts, my neck, under my arms. I smell the drugs and booze and foreign sweat and it’s making me high and sleepy.

Before long, the boy swings around to face me and smiles at me again, and I smile back. He’s sweating too, his hair turning into long black spikes and his ruffled gray t-shirt sticking to his muscular body. He leads me to the bar by holding my elbow, and we sit next to each other on the high torn seats as the bartender mixes his concoctions under the long black table. A hand passes round a joint spewing blue and purple smoke but the boy shakes his head. When it comes to me, I grin and peel it from the offering fingers and press it to my mouth, dragging in so deep I see an explosion of red and purple dots in my eyes as my limbs turn to jelly. The boy holds my back firmly to keep me from falling and I laugh with my mouth open wide. When my eyes clear, I see he is laughing too.

The night drags on. The boy and I dance some more, and I find Zakura among the crowd, sticking to Luka like glue. Meet Luka, her on and off boyfriend. He likes it when girls wear red thongs and hates sex on beds. I hate him in every aspect except for the little fact that he’s okay with dating a deaf girl. The both of them are high, their eyes bloodshot and their throats convulsing with laughter. I bet I’m high too, but I’m too hyped to sit down and wonder about it.

At the end, Zakura finds me and wraps a thin elbow round my waist and giggles with me. Luka kisses her hand and disappears behind the bar. The heap of wasted teens peels away from each other and the blue smoke is cleared away, revealing a mass of red-eyed zombies. The vibrations from the music ebbs away and I feel vulnerable again. My body throbs. My clothing is cold with sweat.

I want to run away before the boy tries to find me, tries to get my number, or talk to me, before he realizes who I truly am. But we’re not fast enough. A strong hand takes my arm and spins me out of Zakura’s grip and I’m facing the boy again, a blush creeping up my neck as his black eyes smile at me. He tells me something, but it’s too fast for me to read his lips. Zakura’s smile is frozen, but she’s catching on. When the boy repeats what he said before, she steps up and tells him something, using her hands out of habit. I lost my hearing when I was nine, when Mom died, so I can speak a little. But Zakura is better at it, more confident. She asks the boy if he could speak slowly, so that we could read his lips. The smile slowly vanishes from his eyes and is replaced with first disbelief, then a kind of anger. He gives me a frozen look before shaking his head and walking away.

The car ride is not as excited as it is supposed to be. I lean my powdered cheek against the window and breathe deep as I stare at the lights of the city. Zakura’s eyes are glued to the road, all the drunkenness and drugs out of her system. Cars speed past us. I recognize some of the people from the party. When she drops me off at my house, her eyes say sorry but her hands are on the wheel. Before I can stop them, my hands prance in the air, spilling out their thoughts.

“He looked at me like I was a monster. Like he was touching a werewolf all night. He looked like he was going to get an exorcism as soon as he came home.” Zakura doesn’t reply, something I actually want her to do for once. My fingers fumble and her eyes look away. I open the door and leave without saying bye.

It’s almost three in the morning but Dad is still awake and sitting comfortably on his recliner, an old book firmly in his long, strong hands. Meet Dad. He likes sad songs in foreign languages and worshipped Mom like a faithful Catholic. He likes candles, noticing odd details in paintings, and staring at big words as he figures out their roots. He hates the rain and cemeteries.

Dad knows something is wrong but he knows me as well. He nods as I limp out of my shoes and up the stairs and collapse into a cold shower. I’m so angry and tired and stoned and angry that the water feels hot against my back, even though it must be freezing. I feel like standing under the stream forever, until I turn into the water itself and melt down the drain and live among all that water. Water doesn’t need sound. It just needs a place to go.

But then it gets really cold and I scramble out and wrap myself in a tower. I change into my night gown and stand in the middle of my room and think forever, think as the curtains by my window shimmer softly with the early morning breeze and think as the lights turn off downstairs, as the floor vibrates while my father slowly climbs up the staircase, taking each step at a time. I want to talk to Broden about what happened, read his lips as he tells me innocent solutions, laugh with him a he tells me make-believe stories about his day. But I stay in the middle of the room and remember the boy’s face when he realized what he had danced with, and what he almost fell in love with.

Zakura regrets forcing me to go, but I smile at her and tell her it’s okay, it wasn’t her fault. I envy her sometimes. I want someone to love me like Luka loves her, even if it is part- time. I always wanted it. One time, I snuck into the school bathrooms with her during lunch and flushed my bra down the toilet. My breasts aren’t small, and I walked around the school the rest of the day in my thin white uniform shirt, watching the boys stare at me. In my school, we don’t have special classes for deaf people. Zakura and I copy notes and watch the teacher and pass the tests, and no one knows anything about us until they try to talk to us. People don’t appreciate sound while they have it. They box each other’s ears when they’re angry and listen to music full volume on their players and in their cars. I feel the vibrations from half a mile away, louder than the music could ever be.

Zakura wants to meet but I say no. She frowns at me through the webcam and I give her a thumbs up. “Come on, “ she signs. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” I shake my head and smile at her. “It’s not that, Kura. I just want to be alone. I’m gonna go to the park again.” She wags a finger. “Be careful.” My hands reply something without my thinking and she logs off. I close my computer and leave a note for Broden and walk out the door.

The walk to the park is long, surrounded by gleaming store windows and buildings. Living in Manhattan always made things seem like sound is not important; it’s all in the eyes, all in the color, the people, the sights. But then when people ask me for the time, or for directions, or when they see me with Zakura or our other deaf friends, it shatters that whole image and makes Manhattan seem like every other place. You’re not one of us if you can’t hear the men playing their guitars for money on the dirty sides of the street, if you aren’t aware of the cars and the horses hooves on the sidewalk, and the people. I try to explain about the vibrations, but you have to be deaf to understand, and even then Zakura giggles at me and tells me that there’s no such thing, our bodies are only trying to make up for the lost sense, the vibrations are a thing of my mind. I remember when I met Luka the first time, when he shook my hand with a detached look on his face; “she’s hot, but.. deaf,” and when I met his other normal friends. There was a boy there, Matt, who seemed to like me despite knowing about me. He kept looking at me and watched my hands when I signed and laughed when I laughed. We all went to Luka’s place then, Luka and Zakura twisted together like tree roots on his cigarette-stained couch and all the other couples having their fun. I found Matt in the kitchen and he poured my glass with Vodka and we drank and laughed, and then I curled against his chest and closed my eyes at his warmth, his security. He stiffened then. His chest quivered as he spoke. I read his lips. “What are you doing?” It wasn’t a nice question, it had a statement behind it; “get off, I don’t like you.” I left early then, I learned to hate people.

The park is at the end of the block. There is no particular reason why I like it, but I find a certain peace in it. As I turn round the gate, I search for the farthest swing and sit on it, my ankles curled round each other, my hair in my face as I turn my head down. There’s a blind boy that comes here too. I see him around sometimes, gliding his hands over every surface as he searches for the swing set. He’s handsome, but unkempt sometimes. Some of the meaner boys of the block like to trip him or stick chewed gum or other gross things on the surfaces they know his hands will touch, but he never says anything to them, never fights back.

He sits on the swing right next to me, and tilts his ear to listen. I stop swinging, but he smiles. His words are slow, deliberate. “I know you’re here.” His lips are perfect, pale. “I can’t see you, but I can hear your breathing and your feet. I won’t bother you.” He starts to get up, but something in me wants him to stop. This is the perfect example of two people having no means of communication, but it never hurts to try.

“I’m deaf.” I bet my voice sounds strange, my words badly formed. My throat throbs as the words tumble out, hesitant at first and then unstoppable. He sits back down, still smiling. “I’m deaf but there’s nothing wrong with me.” I try to remember how to articulate the words, how easy it was for me to talk before I lost it all. “I can read your lips, I can feel you talking! I’M NORMAL!” the words rip my throat open and he flinches as I scream. From the corner of my eye, a flock of pigeons, spooked by my yell, take off into the sky. The boy tilts his head as he listens to their wings, their flight. “We both saw them.” I whisper. I wonder if he understands me. “Do you understand me?”

Nothing happens for two seconds, but they drag like two hours. Finally, he nods. “Yes.” He’s talking to me like a normal person. “Yes, I understand you perfectly.”

“Nayemi.” I whisper. It’s my thank you.

“Toru.”

There’s nothing else for me to say. I sigh. He tilts his head again.

“Tell me what you see.” I reach over and press my fingers lightly against his throat as he speaks. He repeats, the skin quivering. “Tell me what you see. Everything.”

With my fingers dancing at his throat, I look around and talk. Anyone passing by us would think we were just two normal friends, maybe a couple, siblings. Nothing is wrong with us, we’re good people, he’s listening to me and smiling at his hands, and I’m talking and talking, my words falling over each other like pebbles, but still ceaseless.

I can go on like this forever.

• When someone blushes, doesn't that mean "yes"?

There’s a mother somewhere sitting on the roof with her baby cradled in her arms and they’re watching fireworks. His finger is stuck in his mouth because he is afraid of them, and every time the sky screams and shoots forth another spray of static color, like iridescent snow, he jumps, and holds onto his mommy tighter. “What are those?” He mumbles softly round his thumb, sucked to a rosy red. “Fireworks, baby.” He spreads her long hair round his shoulders like a shimmering blanket, wraps his small arms round her waist and neck. “Make them stop.” Shoves his face into her stomach and she takes his small shoulders and smiles at him, as the sky explodes in more snow and illuminates the wet tiles with rainbow paint. “How?” She raises her hands high, like a shrug, to show him how powerless those loving hands really were. “I can’t, baby. I can’t stop them.” He turns his head back and watches the colored fire spread across the black sky like careless paint. He learns today that Mommy can’t do everything.

It’s funny what happens when you grow up. When you were younger, that was your only dream. You would hide in your parents’ closets and clap your mother’s heeled shoes together; press your head along her soft red dresses and your father’s fancy black suits. You would sit on the creaking stair in the middle, close enough to the dining room so you could hear the laughing voices as they sang grown- up talk like a happy orchestra and the clinking of their glasses as they drank that fascinating crimson water, and yet far enough so you could quickly flee to your room if you heard Mother clicking to the staircase to check on you. And then suddenly, you’re grown up, and you have something called problems with something silly like money and work and you suddenly experience something called family and pain. Then you wish you were like Peter Pan. You could be a hundred years old, and yet you still look little and you live with the stars and your only problem is a pirate who is afraid of clocks.

There was that girl that lived a few houses away from you. The one with the spider web hair and the rainwater eyes that looked like they would pour raindrops onto the cement below. She taped herself with band aids because she couldn’t hold herself up any longer, and when she dragged her bones slowly across the pavement she stopped every few seconds so she could drop them and move on again. If you watched carefully, you could almost count the bones she left behind; yesterday a knee cap, a fifth rib, a hipbone. She looked like she wanted to extract all the sunlight from every one’s skin as she watched little kids play hopscotch on the floor with purple sidewalk chalk and plastic hula- hoops. You don’t know what became of her. And most of the time, you really don’t want to, because maybe you could be the same.

You knew a woman once. Well, you never knew her of course, because you never talked to strangers, especially ones like her, but you saw her whenever you came into the bakery to buy that yellow dough your Mama used, to make her super soft bread on Sundays. She had white, white hair, that woman, with trembling hands and blue, blue eyes that always stared at the T.V screen in the corner. She never took her eyes off that screen, as she tried to see how many times she spelled that bad man’s name with the letters running quickly on the bottom, puking out bad news like a carton of spilt milk. You never let yourself think about it, of course, but you still thought about it. You always wondered if maybe she used to be sane.

My favorite thing to do when I was angry, or sad, was hop out my bedroom window and get on the bus that stopped every nine minutes at the corner by my house. I would sit at the farthest seat and breathe on the window until it grew gray with hot steam, and then I would trace my finger across the filmy warmth and draw my name or funny messages. Sometimes I would draw a heart, and hope somebody would see it and love me back. I would draw in careful script and then realize that nobody could read it because my forward would be their backward because that was how things were; the way you understood things was the way others misunderstood them. I drew faces, and flowers, and traced the buildings when the bus stopped. Or when I was really sad, I would write Help Me and then erase it with my elbow so nobody would see.

There was that really rainy day when you forgot your umbrella, and you ran to take cover under the donut shop with other huddling men and women in their long trench coats and wet hair. You saw an old man that day, who didn’t want to hide with you and the others. He just sat on the dirty sidewalk with his crooked hands in his lap and his spine bent like a hook. A suitcase was nestled between his thighs and he let the rain stream down his face and pool in his many wrinkles and gather in his white beard. When he looked up at the sky, your felt your heart break, even though you didn’t know his sadness, and you wondered, if maybe he was beautiful once.

You liked lying in empty bathtubs and staring at the ceiling. You liked tracing your finger across the blue veins mapped on your arm. You liked to take your hair in your hand and slowly cut it with scissors, listening to that dry sound as your hair curled slowly to the floor like dead butterfly wings. You fantasized about death, and you thought about drugs, just because you were always taught against it and it gave you a thrill to think of it. You watched your baby sister as she hugged your knees and kissed your hands and you pat her hair and remembered how you used to be happy too, until you met boys and their heart traps, and saw broken people on the streets with purple fingers and sad eyes. She would tell you she wanted to be just like you, pretty like you, and you would smile at her and read her a book and then wonder inside what made you grow up and wither and stop seeing magic beyond rusty ashtrays and psychedelic colors and people shouting. You didn’t want her to be like this. So you sang her songs and held her hand and braided her hair and never cursed in front of her, or taught her words like bad and hurt and even love, but she learned it all herself anyway. You wanted her to keep the strawberries in her cheeks and the magic in her fingers, and it made you cry so hard that time she threw away her Teddy because she was too old.

There’s a man who is normal on the outside and lonely in his heart. Every night he lies alone with ivory skin shining in the pale moonlight. His sad, hazel eyes watch the pools of street lamp lights glittering by the window, as his hands line an empty bedside. He wonders, only because he cannot remember, Maybe he had loved once?

Somewhere, a teenage girl falls in love for the first time with a tall boy who paints pretty pictures with his words. And then the night turns black as the girl screams at her mother, who only tried to warn her; “You’re just a machine! And you can’t feel anything at all! You have no heart!” And then her mother’s tongue turns to ice because she knows it’s true. But in a week, he leaves her for another girl and she is heartbroken, so her mother takes to the hill by the house, arms crossed against the wind, and they sit together to watch the cracked egg paste of the bleeding sunset above the dark trees, as the girl thinks the synapses of her desire. “I loved him. I really did.” She whispers, and leans a cheek against her mother’s quiet shoulder, and her mother feels her own heart break with her daughters, and the silence of her words fills with the splintering crack of breaking hearts. “I know.” Her mother fingers the loose earth beneath her jeans as the girl’s hair curls at her palm. “I know.”

Somewhere, a couple argues bitterly over something they forgot. Glass shatters, spilling crimson wine over the floor like blood and they cry and embrace. A mother and her baby see each other grow and hate and love and grow more. A little girl watches two raindrops as they race down her sparkling window, and smiles as the one she has been counting on, wins. A dog wags his tail and barks with pure, everlasting joy as his master returns from work, just to show that he will never forget him. People who jump from buildings fly back up and continue walking and learn to smile, men snorting drugs sneeze out white plumes of dust and come back home, and abandoned babies are picked up by smiling mothers from the harsh snow and taken back home to be cradled by the fireplace. And the people who suffered? You grow up thinking about them forever, and wondering, that maybe you will see them again. Happy.

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

Lily was that girl with a secret side.

Lily’s nickname was “what a good girl”. Lily’s middle name was “gets good grades cleans the house takes care of baby sister makes parents proud”. Lily’s name apart from Lily was “all teens should be like her.”

Was.

Sometimes when people smile you should look into their eyes and see what they really feel. Lily read somewhere that you can almost always tell apart a fake smile from a real one by looking at people’s eyes. She never liked her daddy’s crinkle anymore after that.

Good Lily was a happy happy child. She ate every meal and studied hard and loved her sister very very much. She smiled and had good friends and never argued with her parents and didn’t even need a bed time, she was so good. High school was just a little adjustment and she adjusted.

Bad Lily was mean. She stuck her toothbrush down her throat and puked the shit her parents fed her every night when they went to bed. She skipped breakfast and smoked at lunch. She ate an apple sometimes. She didn’t like taking care of Amy. When she smiled, her eyes gleamed and when she studied; she drew bad things in the margins of her notebook that she hid with smiles when her parents checked. Her friends got her drugs and when her parents talked she cried in her mind.

Good Lily liked to brush her hair.

Bad Lily liked to cut the undersides of it when she was stoned.

Good Lily wrote reports about self- mutilation and underlined in red how bad they all were.

Bad Lily often went down the road ‘cuz crossing the street didn’t make enough blood come out.

Good Lily came home one day with a bad smile that she erased when mommy came from little Amy’s room. Good Lily ate the yummy (greasy, disgusting) slice of pizza (120 calories) her mommy made for her and went upstairs to do her chemistry (does lsd go well with cold beer?)

Bad Lily came home with a sketchpad and a slab of charcoal and sat down at the kitchen table and drew and drew and drew and felt happy until daddy came home and ripped up the paper and told her that art was the sure way to destruction and that she must become a doctor go to your room and study your homework.

Good Lily lied like a mythomaniac.

Bad Lily really wanted to tell the truth. Really.

“Sometimes, when a person has suffered extreme physical or psychological trauma, they will assume the fetal position or a similar position in which the back is curved forward, the legs are brought up as tightly against the abdomen as possible, the head is bowed as close to the abdomen as possible, and the arms are wrapped around the head to prevent further trauma. This position provides better protection to the brain and vital organs than simply lying spread out on the ground, so it is obvious as to why it is an instinctual reaction to extreme stress or trauma when the brain is no longer able to cope with the surrounding environment, and in essence "shuts down" temporarily. Fetal position has been observed in drug addicts, who enter the position when experiencing withdrawal. It has also been found that people who sleep in the fetal position consistently tend to have a shy and sensitive personality. Some people assume this position when sleeping, especially when the body becomes cold.”

Good Lily told herself that nothing ever happened. She liked to take the past and kick in the dust. She liked to burn it like a catalyst when she did chemistry. She liked to drown it in the water that pooled in the sink when she washed her face after too much smiling.

Bad Lily shuddered when she looked at boys and felt her heart freeze when she heard sounds. She kept her mouth shut but if people only looked at her eyes they would have seen them melt with her fear and sorrow. Bad Lily kept too many secrets.

Good Lily had a good boyfriend that she avoided only because of school. She was a very good student.

Bad Lily was used by him. Usedbeatenhurtrapedinsultedbeatednusedraped. She kept his secret. Or was it hers?

Good Lily liked being bad.
Bad Lily was sick of pretending.

Good Lily smirked at Bad Lily and called her pathetic and loser. She gave Bad Lily a rope and knife and said ‘haha, loser, choose.’

Bad Lily cried red and wanted to talk.

Good Lily laughed louder and said suicide was pathetic but suicide notes were even more pathetic.

Bad Lily tied the rope round her neck.

Good Lily laughed louder and took a drag of pot.

Bad Lily tightened the noose.

Good Lily leaned against the door and watched.

Bad Lily swallowed hard and felt the chair under her bare feet.

Good Lily was afraid.

Bad Lily was sweating.

Good Lily whispered ‘wait.’

Bad Lily bit her lip and kicked the chair. Hard.

Little Amy woke up and started to cry.



Lily was that girl no one ever suspected.

Lily’s nickname was “what went wrong?” Lily’s middle name was “how could she do this to her parents? and that poor little sister… oh my, what a shame” Lily’s name apart from Lily was “maybe we missed something.”

All depends on the rules..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHF0VXPanU8

• None of us find as much happiness in this life as we should.

She sat with her friend under the budding apple tree, cradled by satin pink blossoms and smooth apple flesh. The two girls were perched on a looming branch, their backs leaning against the rough bark. Their pale hands each held a bitten piece of fruit from the tree, their soft fingers hugging the sticky crimson globes.

Tracee leaned towards Cara and whispered softly in her ear, her breath tangibly perfumed with the smell of pink flowers and light sunshine.

“Let’s go.” Her sweet apple breath kissed the other girls white cheek and smoothed away her corn yellow hair. “Let’s walk around.”

The blonde girl giggled; a pretty sound that danced its way through the whistling silence. “Okay.” She let her elegant hand drown in her silky hair and reappear again at the middle, where she rippled it boastingly. Her icy blue eyes stared into her friend’s chocolate ones. “Where?”

Tracee curled her hair around a caramel finger. Her eyes flew down to stare at the swimming grass below them. “Don’t know.”

She lifted up a thin hand covered by long black sleeve and smoothed away a fallen strand of hair. Her friend frowned suddenly, and took hold of the hand mid- swipe. She stared at the fingers, thinking. “You’re sad again.”

Tracee looked ashamed. “I’ve been having that feeling again. Like... I’m forgetting something. What can I forget if I have nothing to remember?”

She looked out from the pink and purple dots of dancing flowers. Cara lifted her face. “Come. Let me show you something.”

She nimbly hopped down from their hidden perch and smiled up at Tracee. Then she briskly walked off across the meadow, her bare feet stepping lightly on the shimmering green stained with the pink and red corpses of drying apple blossoms. The other girl skidded clumsily off the branch and landed quietly on her naked feet. Her hair enveloped her face in a cloud of dark brown waves for a mere second. She looked around, her brown eyes reflecting the trees littered on the prairie, colored branches swinging in the light air.

She got up. “Cara!” Her voice rang out in the heavy silence. She caught a glimpse of flying blond hair and a shimmering blouse, almost invisible amid the swirls of floral rain. She ran. Her feet glided in abstract circles as she jogged around tall trees and shielded her eyes from the falling flowers. The wind tickled her neck, kissed the clumsy scars where the whispering weeds snagged at her thinly veined ankles and shins.

“Cara! Wait for me!” Her friend stopped. Her face spread wide in a smile as she turned around to look at the running girl.

“Almost there, Trace.” She offered a white hand to the panting girl. Tracee took it and breathed in a breath filled with sweet apples and flying flowers. Her heart felt free.

They continued walking in a synchronized path, their silent feet padding on the grass together like a series of connected chords in a quiet symphony. Cara led her to the end of the prairie, where the green cut off into orange and red damp leaves and rotten moss under the shadowed canopies of a dark forest. A bare, dying tree stood right before the forest; its long grey branches spreading eerie shadows on the suddenly dull grass. Tracee lined her eyes over the piles of rubbish spread round the gnarled roots of the old tree and then inquisitively looked at Cara. Her friend pointed.

“It isn’t just rubbish.” She seemed to read Tracee’s mind. “Look closely.” Tracee looked.

Seeds upon seeds lay littered like tiny black ants next to the curled skins of rotting apples. Dried flowers; brown and fragile, like a butterfly’s wing, fluttered helplessly like tired moths. Broken pieces of a tree once beautiful, like Tracee’s heart. Cara bent down and picked up the glittering corpse of an orange butterfly. And then she pointed at the branches.

Bottle upon bottle was tied by slender throat to every branch; each bottle only an inch apart from the other. They swung slowly like clothing out to dry, the glass glittering with every peeking ray of light, making soft ticking sounds as they hit each other.

Each bottle was filled with something. One was filled with the shimmering bodies of delicate butterflies, another with surgical scissors and a headless doll. A photograph with smiling women was folded in a dancing bottle. As the bottle swung near, she saw that every woman’s face was neatly crossed out in different colored sharpies, except for one. The sharpies leaned against the glass side in a neat rubber banded bundle by the yellowed photograph. They were all memories. Forgotten pasts. Someone had come to share their pain and memories with the old dying tree by giving it something.

The bottles clinked together as Tracee stared at the tree long and hard; until her eyes grew numb and the tears started to slowly fall. Cara silently blew on the butterfly in her hands, and they both watched as it fluttered like a leaf down to the darkened ground.

***
The next day, Cara wasn’t at the meadow.

And the day after that.

And the day after that.

Tracee came every day to the shimmering meadow, blinked against the everlasting rainfall of soft blossoms, and sat in their perch. She left every day when Cara didn’t arrive after many hours.

She didn’t have anywhere to go, though. She wandered aimlessly by the weaving trees as they folded their long arms to rest with the night and strolled past each one of them. But her feet turned sharply round every time she came to the dead tree at the end of the meadow, as if the force of it drew her away. It was during these moments that she had those weird feelings, like she was missing something, something that she just couldn’t remember.

***
It was only on the forty seventh day of Cara’s disappearance that she realized that the bottles were filled with memories. She remembered the photograph with the smiling women; her mother’s old friends. She remembered how her mother lost each one after her illnesses, and she had crossed each one out with her markers to help her mother. The scissors and doll was for a girl who was mean to her. After she cut the dolls head off, the girl broke her leg and moved away.

She filled the last bottle with a piece of her hair that she cut off with the surgical scissors. It was wrapped around a soft flower that had blown into her hand as she opened a new bottle that had been empty on the tree.

She smiled at the trees. Maybe she should be getting home. They had nursed her for far too long. She smoothed a hand down the bark of the tree she always sat on with Cara, and then without her pale friend.

“Tracee.” She looked around as she searched for the voice. It came from nobody. The trees were beckoning to her with their shimmering branches but she closed her eyes.

She lay down on the grass, the soft dancing stalks that pillowed her head and blanketed her slender fingers and bare feet.

“Tracee.” The voice sounded from far away and she couldn’t catch it.

“Tracee, wake up.”

She shook her head and just kept her eyes closed, sighing under the flowers that were quickly falling on her body. In a moment, she was covered in pink and purple dots, like an abstract painting. Her breathing started to slow, and her head was filled with foggy memories.

***
She opened her eyes. Surrounding her were the whitewashed walls of a silent hospital room.

She shifted. The crisp white covers spread over her tired body moved with her. She eyed the silent paintings of mountains and rivers and the thin designs on the top of the walls. There was a button beside her, connected to wires by the IV stuck to her hand. For the sake of company, she pressed it.

She was suddenly enveloped in warm bodies and different colors, tangy perfumes that were so much different from the sweet smell of apples and lonely peace. Different hands held her emotionless face; old and wrinkled like a satin dress, young and firm like the trees she slept in. A pale face that resembled her mother’s drifted in and out of focus as she gushed tears on the bed and Tracee’s wrinkled gown. Her father’s dark face smiled at her as he held her hand. A boy leaned down and kissed her forehead. She eyed him cautiously.

“Tristan.” They stopped their fluttering and touching as her thin voice echoed round the room. The boy smiled at her.
“Tracee.”

She let her family hug her again and cry over her face and hair and chest. She held Tristan’s firm hand. She tried to remember her land of peace and loneliness, where Cara had come to her one day and left another.

But all she remembered, was a broken butterfly, fluttering softly to the dancing earth.

• Adults are, like, this mess of sadness and phobias.

I hear him cursing in the other room.
My eyes are closed; I imagine him pacing like a bear, bashing his shoulders heavily against the wall and dragging his huge feet across the dirty carpet. Size 11 desert yellow Nike sneakers. Bought them myself. This was back when we were happy and I didn’t have to flinch when he lifted his arms or when his blue eyes locked on mine.

The thin walls vibrate as he grunts and throws something across the room. The noise makes me flinch; like three hundred china plates crashing onto a tiled floor at the same time; or a chandelier glittering its last dance as it collapses to the floor and billows on itself like a sparkling plume of crystal dust.

Enough imagining. I’ll have to clean it up later; sometime around midnight, maybe, when he lumbers drowsily into the bedroom and slams headfirst onto the bed. He’ll be done for the night and I would be free, at least until the morning hours will wear thin and the sun will traitorously peek from behind a musty couch and laugh at me.

***

“He wasn’t always like this, you know.” She doesn’t look at me as she flips her red hair to her other shoulder and tilts her head to the side, examining the plastic green basket bulging with bright strawberries. I sigh and a smile plays at her lips.

“It doesn’t matter how he was before, Ly. He’s who he is now, and he’s hurting you.” She sharply averts her head like an owl and throws the basket into my cart. “He isn’t hurting me, Fin. Honestly, he’s a good person. He just has these…”

“Violent moments?” Another glare as she steers me to the refrigerated vegetables. Her thin fingers wrap around a jagged broccoli stick and she examines this as well, taking in every leaf and branch of it. She’s avoiding me. Think, Fin, think.

“Maybe you should leave him, Ly.” Shit. Too early. She puts down the broccoli and directs me with a full glare. Her hands are trembling. “August… is a good man, Fin. A good… man. He’s kind to me… and given me a place to stay... and I love him.” She nods her head dramatically, affirming her decision. “Yes. I love him. I love August.” She drifts away to the tall rusty refrigerators and I slowly follow her ankle- length skirt, pushing the cart in front of me

***

It was my fault. It really was. I got in the way, that’s all. I wasn’t supposed to be there, and I was. Simple. It’s all my fault.
He limped back home stinking of beer and whore sweat and I quickly grabbed a washbasin and filled it warm water to clean up his face a little bit; he must’ve gotten into another fight.

I woke him up. I wasn’t supposed to wake him when he was sleeping.

He roared. He pushed me and the washbasin overturned as I fell back, my foot catching on the broken leg of the chair. Blood splashed onto the floor from the soft underside of my foot. I’ll have to clean that up later.

He laughed and grabbed my hair and smacked my back and threw the washbasin at my face. I didn’t say anything. It was my fault, remember?

My foot stung and my head stung and my back stung and the floor was bloody and wet. He stood there, debating what to do. Then, suddenly, he fell into the chair. In milliseconds, snores escaped from his beat- up nose and his chin was pressed to his throat. I fell to the floor and pressed my fists against the dirty carpet and screamed. Then I cleaned up. It was my fault. No point in crying over spilt milk.

***

“What happened?” Her eyes are rimmed a sickly purple and pink and her hair is stiff. “Was he drunk again? Lyra, what happened?”

“Fuck off.” She pushes the menu aside. Puts her head heavily on her thin arms. I want to hold her so much, pat her hair, whisper to her, brush away her hurt. But she’ll only start screaming. I tip over the salt shaker and watch the beads slip onto the table. She remains still.

“Lyra.”

“Mmmmf wommf.” I look at the floor, at her ripped jeans and the delicate curve of her thin- boned knee, at the white string curling like spaghetti from the tears in the denim. Why can’t I help her? You fucking coward. She needs help and you’re just sitting there looking at her legs.

***

It’s true, August wasn’t always like this. And sometimes, he’s nice again.
For my birthday, he buys me a little chain with a harp pendent, because my name means harp in Latin. He’s special like that, he really is. We quietly eat the crumbling cake I made and then he hugs me round the waist and pulls me into the bed and we finally make love and not hurried hate. The next day, Fin invites me to celebrate with him at his home so I drag August with me, just so they’d meet, you know?

But Fin is so horrible. He glares at August the entire time until August almost overturns the table with his big hands and I flinch and Fin watches me as I jump in my seat a mile a minute. Their yells are muted in my mind. Fin stretches a thin arm in my direction and his mouth turns ugly as he curses at August, and August shows the finger oneteothreefourfive times to Fin and smacks the table. I jump again, because I imagine my face under that heavy palm. SMACK. I grimace. SMACK. My chair screeches as I lurch back. SMACK. I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my fists to my temple. I hear Fin as a whisper. “… afraid of you… jumps… what’re you doing…to her?”

I jump from my seat and grab August’s livid hand and pull. He doesn’t budge so I pull harder. He doesn’t move. I slap his back.

They freeze. August turns in my direction but my eyes are dull and I look at my shoes. “Let’s go.” I mumble, and I wrap my fingers around his hand and walk. He follows me. Fin stays behind.

“Happy fucking birthday.” I say, and I’m angry. I close the door to shut out the pain in Fin’s eyes.

***

“You’re my best friend, Fin. I love you, you know that?”
She’s drunk again. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be talking to me.
I can hear her liquor stained breath as she giggles and I sigh in response, twiddling my pen across the smooth surface of the desk. “Is that right.”

“Oh, yeah. You’re the best friend a girl can have!”I cringe as she squeals and tighten my fingers round the smooth plastic of the receiver.

“Lyra, maybe you should go to bed. Sleep it off. I promise you’ll forget about your love for me tomorrow.”
She giggles again and I imagine her silky red hair as she throws her head back, ribbon lips revealing a perfect row of icy white teeth.

Stop imagining.

“Ly, come on. Don’t make me worried.” She stops laughing and I hear her breathe again. “What will you do if you’re worried?” Her voice is taunting; inviting. I shift in my seat.

“I’ll… uh... stay on until I hear you snoring. “

Another laugh. “Oh, silly, I don’t snore.” A pause. “What religion are you?”

Huh?

“Um. Catholic. From my parents. I’m not a believer though.”

“Hm…. Catholic. My mom was Catholic. My dad was a Jew. Catholicism has way too many rules for me. Too many laws to abide to be sure that I’m going to land in a place I don’t even believe in when I kick the bucket. I’ve been bad.”

“Well, I’ll send you letters from Heaven then.”

A laugh. “It’s alright, babe. I’ll charm the Devil himself, and we’ll dance together under the fiery skies beneath the black iron gates of Hell.”

I open my mouth to say something but I hear a muffled gasp and a swollen, deep voice. My blood boils. Anyone can recognize that voice.

“Lyra? Lyra, is it him?”

I hear yells and I stand up in spite of myself. “Lyra!”

The connection dies.

***
I pretend to be drunk so I won’t have to think of reasons for why I’m talking to him again, or why I want to say what I say. He’s afraid for me, I hear him, and I try to tell him that I’m alright but we end up talking about religion. Then, August breaks open the door.
“Who’re you talking to, Lyra?!” And I drop the phone. He enters the room and I flatten myself against the wall. “No one, baby.”

“Is it him again? That asshole?”

“No, honey, it isn’t. It was my sister, Julie. Remember her? Julie?” He does, apparently. Good, cause I don’t have a sister.

He turns around and seems ready to collapse again when suddenly he flashes back and pounds me hard as a hammer across the face.

“You think I’m fucking stupid?” He bellows. I fall to the floor and press my palm to my blistering cheek. Somehow, I manage to shake my head.

There’s a silence. He says nothing. I throw my face onto the floor and just breathe in the dust and he breathes his beer air. I cringe as he puts a hand on my back.

“Ly, I’m sorry. Baby, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to…” I watch him from the corner of my eye as she shoves a beefy fist into his mouth and his face turns miserable. How can I not forgive him?

How can I?

I shove my face deeper into the carpet and he moves his hand away.

“Why are you doing this, Lyra? Why can’t you support me? I love you more than anything and you treat me like a load of shit!”

I want to cry, I’m so sorry, I forgive you, I know you didn’t mean, I’m sorry, sorry, hush. But I remain crouched with my face in the floor. He leaves.

I lift my head and breathe in clean.

***

“This can’t go on anymore, Lyra.” I almost cry as I see the angry blackened bruise eating at her eye. “How can you love him still?”

“Oh, I don’t.” My heart flutters. She smiles. It’s fake. “I just like how he makes my body feel. Alive, and beautiful. Like a butterfly. ” She’s being ridiculous.

I shake my head. “I don’t understand you, Lyra.”

“No one understands me. Melancholy of a butterfly. Haha.”

I place my hand on hers and she shivers but doesn’t move it away. “I want to, though. I want to understand you.” She stares past my shoulder for a while, eyes squinted. Then she moves her hand away.

“You know I can’t do this, Fin. And anyway, pain is cool. At least he isn’t leaving me or anything. I should be grateful, right? Pain helps me forget that I don’t love him.”

She’s going mad.

“Skeletons... they- they need coffins.” She explains. “I want to be a skeleton.”

“You are a skeleton. You’re thinner.”

“No, I mean a real one. Genuine.”

I shake my head. Her eyes are so dull. She’s given up. We stare past each other for a while longer until her phone starts to ring.

“Oh. August.” She whispers. “I have to go.” She flashes a small smile and leaves. “Bye, Finnie.” I watch her silent walk as she crosses the street and disappears.

Skeletons need coffins. Yes. Even if they don’t fit.