A trench of vein.

London

Ava was never interesting. Ava learned the violin from a very young age under her mother's careful consideration. She knew a few pieces she would perform every time her inherited sadness resurfaced.




Boston
Static. I'm in a hotel. Finals, papers all finished. Maria and I bought train tickets for home a few hours after our last lecture.
I left my shoes in the sink because it was snowing and dripping black snow on this guy's floor.
I've tiptoed to the living room. I find my necklace on the glass table-top. And the lipstick. Maria is snoring loudly. His hand is all over her ass. Poor girl.

The train is so stuffy and it smells like meat pies. Meat pies and pine. Great. I get jammed into a corner beside a moody little girl holding a stuffed elephant and drooling over her colouring book. Colour outside the lines, jam sticky on her fingers, what a mess. 

New Mexico

"Joce, you look fresh as a page"
"Thanks Frank. I didn't even miss home" I'm searching for my smokes because I don't want to speak to Frank anymore. He used to court mama before Daddy came from out of town and now he likes to reminisce when he sees me because he thinks I look like mama.
"Jo, it's so funny you know.."
He'll say something about my hair.
"Did you get thinner?"
"Frank, I think I've to get going. Mama hates it when I hang around the station. The gang always shows up and sooner or later Katie will drag me out before I get a chance to get my stuff home"
"Oh don't I know it? I'll come by tomorrow to bring some pie"
Perfect. More sugar.
"Thanks a million Frank" I skip out of there. In a heartbeat I'm on the sidewalk that will dip into my neighbourhood. I had read Blue Castle, in fragments, on the way home.
The twisted, evangelical sort of love appealed to me in my sleepy state. The hesitance, the slow development, the eventual blossom of love.
I hadn't read a simple book I could feel good about in so long.

I see Daddy from the corner of my eyes. He's putting up some Christmas lights. Wearing his heavy coat.
Tall daddy, because yes..they build them tall and fair south of the border.


Madalena is sinking. She has taken grandpa to this furious part of the forest. Marshes. Hungry earth. Humid. There is musk in the air.

She laughs so hard while her long black hair is drowning out her gold. She transmits gold. She is gold. Madalena just drips wealth. 
She runs fast and crimson cuts adorn her cheeks when branches like sick dying fingers want to taste her skin. She knows their arrangement, she has planned her jumps so they accompany the leaf rustle. 
Grandpa wants to grab her hair, tie her up, keep her still, keep her his. Grandpa wants to love her.
So, he picks her up and twirls her. The tiniest part of her black eyes (flash flash) captures the pine. 
She bites him on the neck. She screams. She falls and quickly gets to her feet. She runs.


Maximilian touches Ava's back. With the back of his hand. Her lovely curvature invites a graze. 

"Daddy! Daddy, you never put up lights Daddy"
"Aw pumpkin I figured you was gonna show up near them late carollers showin' up and them not knowing' where to fuss about the front door without them lights here"
I'm too old to be picked up but Daddy has that glint in his eye that he'd twirl me.
"Saw Frank.  Shoulda seen his store all in a god awful disarray" My language came back to me. I'm a dreamin' in them colours that are said to align near the sunset when seagulls cry by the port. Those technicolor glints. I'm happy.

"Now you listen to me. Don't go payin' Frank much mind no more. Since he's forgotten your mama's not sixteen we'll let him figure it out on his own. Everytime he gets it wrong babydoll"
"Yea daddy"
"You gonna be a writer soon or what?"
I laugh and push the lights out of his hand. I want to give him something important. 


On the twenty fifth of December three years after they were married, Ava died.
She died in her white bed, with the smallest fire in her fireplace. She didn't mutter much, her hands white like snow intertwined over her chest. 
Maximilian suffered silently. He cried little but he knew this was the end. He resigned from life. Politely. With dignity.

"Imagine flight. Imagine flight"
Grandpa stares at her. She's darned cursed. She's art. She's angels singin' in heaven and all the nonsense.

"Now imagine fright" Madalena's hands transform into birds and they fly above their spilled bodies on the moss. They fly no further than her tossed hair.
"What you mean fright girl?"

She means flight. Madalena confuses her r's and her l's. Grandpa doesn't know this. So, Madalena will be written over in violence.
She laughs and her hands fly again.

They fly. They fly.