If you're reached this point by accident, I suggest panic
Laura shifted, seated neatly in a sticky seat, its attached desk pregnant with a mound of multi-colored gum wads turned dust-grey by time. A swastika tattoo had carved itself persistently on the shoulder where she rested her arm. She feared touching its sharp indentations as though it could spread up her elbow and into her deep wide chest.
There are wholes in the sky, proclaimed the crayon mess below her, where her son had scribbled in dots of yellow amongst the black of a night sky. Though his portrait of night had escaped the light pollution of the city.
She hardly stopped to wonder whether he meant holes or wholes. But it didn't matter anyways, because there's a bible on his bedside table and he knows, he knows, he knows. There's nothing spelling can teach him about what's in the sky.
Her heart thumped a beat like a nightclub floor, and beside her the woman in green delved into her neon orange purse for a pen, and the smell of cheap lotion and breath mints consumed her brain.
Memory is like a bathtub, murmured the twisting, turning wheels in her mind, but only God controls the spout and the drain.
The scent tumbled blindly from the faucet of her mind, boiling her tub of memory.
Dolls - their eyes like searchlights and their lips like the stain of pomegranate juice on white linen - lined the walls, up high where small hands could not wander – the gods of nick knacks and toys.
Useless dolls, pointless dolls, breathless dolls, heartless dolls. Unreachable. Unbearable. Girls so young could not touch such priceless lovely dolls, her mother said. Laura’s fingers were harsh then, still are, and too blunt to touch the faces of the gods.
The ladder beneath her beat her feet while she stepped, slamming its hard polished surface against the arches as she marched to the rhythm of her racing heart.
A second left on the countdown and mother rushed in to diffuse the ticking bomb of her daughter, eyes wide on her face like an unblinking fish. One swipe of a small blunt hand grazing the smooth satin gown of a god and -
Later, her mother opened her purse of cheap lotion and breath mints, the smell of regret, pulled out those crisp pieces of paper with soft angry hands and ripped up the two theatre tickets for that night's ballet. The rift between woman and girl had been widened and Laura wept for a lost night with mother, for the fleeting innocence of satin gowns and the cold hard pieces of porcelain that father swept into a big black pan and threw out with old banana peels.
The bathwater cooled, Laura curled out of herself and lay down flat on her back in the lukewarm tub of memory and breathed out. Sometimes, she thought, it's so nice to breathe out.
She could hear the smooth sound of a neon green purse being zipped closed beside her, and outside the holes of the sky shrieked their hatred to the faces of the streetlamps.
"About your son," began the teacher, kneeling down like a teacher with her voice like a teacher and soft hands like a teacher. Laura bit her tongue.
There are wholes in the sky, proclaimed the crayon mess below her, where her son had scribbled in dots of yellow amongst the black of a night sky. Though his portrait of night had escaped the light pollution of the city.
She hardly stopped to wonder whether he meant holes or wholes. But it didn't matter anyways, because there's a bible on his bedside table and he knows, he knows, he knows. There's nothing spelling can teach him about what's in the sky.
Her heart thumped a beat like a nightclub floor, and beside her the woman in green delved into her neon orange purse for a pen, and the smell of cheap lotion and breath mints consumed her brain.
Memory is like a bathtub, murmured the twisting, turning wheels in her mind, but only God controls the spout and the drain.
The scent tumbled blindly from the faucet of her mind, boiling her tub of memory.
Dolls - their eyes like searchlights and their lips like the stain of pomegranate juice on white linen - lined the walls, up high where small hands could not wander – the gods of nick knacks and toys.
Useless dolls, pointless dolls, breathless dolls, heartless dolls. Unreachable. Unbearable. Girls so young could not touch such priceless lovely dolls, her mother said. Laura’s fingers were harsh then, still are, and too blunt to touch the faces of the gods.
The ladder beneath her beat her feet while she stepped, slamming its hard polished surface against the arches as she marched to the rhythm of her racing heart.
A second left on the countdown and mother rushed in to diffuse the ticking bomb of her daughter, eyes wide on her face like an unblinking fish. One swipe of a small blunt hand grazing the smooth satin gown of a god and -
Later, her mother opened her purse of cheap lotion and breath mints, the smell of regret, pulled out those crisp pieces of paper with soft angry hands and ripped up the two theatre tickets for that night's ballet. The rift between woman and girl had been widened and Laura wept for a lost night with mother, for the fleeting innocence of satin gowns and the cold hard pieces of porcelain that father swept into a big black pan and threw out with old banana peels.
The bathwater cooled, Laura curled out of herself and lay down flat on her back in the lukewarm tub of memory and breathed out. Sometimes, she thought, it's so nice to breathe out.
She could hear the smooth sound of a neon green purse being zipped closed beside her, and outside the holes of the sky shrieked their hatred to the faces of the streetlamps.
"About your son," began the teacher, kneeling down like a teacher with her voice like a teacher and soft hands like a teacher. Laura bit her tongue.
posted by Anonymous Bitch at 12:09 AM
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