J is sleeping beside the most beautiful boy. Blue eyes and a southern accent. His breath comes in waves and she snuggles her nose into his eyelashes so she can smell his visions. What forests await? Where do we go from here? Which one is this one?
Her mother sits there on her shoulder. She's making her feel guilty but happy. Jocey jocey jocey. Oh Jocey baby. Yeah mom I know but I'm in tatters and if not now then never again. If not now, then never again.
"Guilt means you're alive. Happiness means you're almost dead"
She found that quotation on a book's inside jacket in another lifetime. The street was sunny and the book jacket was faded green. Some obscure street she had strayed to when she was meant to be doing something else entirely. In another lifetime. Surely. Yes, in another lifetime.
The year is almost over and she doesn't remember how it began. She remembers foggy nights with nightly bumps and bruises.
The sea laps. Laps laps laps. Licks the ship clean and licks the shores clean. Adam is sick over the edge. His insides are outside and he's mangled inside. He's been smoking the loose tabac too he's all fire. He wants water, he wants England. The rupture hurts. The rupture he imagines, feverish, is made smaller and stitched into his side. To have it there inside him. Sewn into his skin. So he can see it every morning and so he can wish to close it up for good every night. But this rupture that he cannot put into words, this madness, is making him struggle, it's making him sick. It's making a fool of him.
Ada came to him once in a dream. He was seeing visions, coloured films, projections of ethereal beings, angels smirking, buzzing icons. She stood outside his window, he was under the tree with her, she was in the bed with him. That seems like centuries ago. There are many years in a day. Ada died mangled and hurting.
*
"Well I just right on told him if he ain't got the soldier in him, then he can pussy on out" Jocey is drawing patterns in the sand and erasing them with both her palms. The sand feels hot and then instantly cold and alien. Hot, then cold and alien. Hot cold alien. Hot cold alien. She's feeling scared and a little excited. This rupture, this very last rupture might just be the most incredible beginning. Tabula Rasa. Hot alien cold. The sand welcomes, then closes off. Stinging and cold. She imagines scorpions in her hair, on her shoulders. Taking small pieces of her flesh, taking everything. Erasing her into the sand until there's only matted gorgeous hair left on the surface. Until she's swallowed by the cold and reunited with the creatures underneath. Until there's nothing but wine and poetry above. Until the gypsies clap into dawn.
She looks pale and white as snow because she misses him. She misses that lonely stranger from long ago who gave her the courage to draw in the sand. To draw images that feared their destruction but stood bold in the golden granules and prayed for the best.
Maria sits like a beautiful sphinx. Unaware of this piece of monologue. Blonde and gorgeous and unmoved, she tans her long legs and her delicious neck and her strawberry nose. Her ocean eyes dip in dip out like waves under the dizzying rays. "Well, I understand Joce but why you gatta always pick the trashy ones? I mean, I know Sam ain't no prize win but at least he's still here. He's not left my side"
How do you compete with that? Against it all, he's never really left her side. Soldiers, solidarity. Security. Blankets, blankets, blankets heavy with water and sun. Blankets to secure her in her place. Blankets to remind her that she's a little girl inside, breaking open to close up harder. Like clay.
*
Ava is melting clay. Ava exists in a world without Ada. The rupture will be mended in the next life. There is nothing left now.There is only this loss, this paralysis.
Lady Marguerite showed her the carpet with the blood stain. The room was cold, there were sparrows pecking randomly on the sill. The sequences came slowly. Every word uttered was a desert. The first word
"Ava" followed by clenched jaws. Shadowed eyes. Max - a bent shadow.
She imagined an unbearable heat. Her soles burning on the sand. No cloud, no solace, not a piece of shadow on the planet. No bird in the sky, nothing. Not a drop of water. Scorching. Parched to death.
The second word
"Ada" followed by a pinch in the throat. A pause. Max? Adam - a bent shadow.
An unbearable heat. An unbearable thirst. An inability to breathe. Butterflies. Butterflies pouring from the skies and sinking. Aflame mid-flight. Ashes before hitting hotter ground. Hades. Hades is hell. He breathes fire and forgives nothing.
Third,
"Left"
They're both six or seven. Ada is waiting outside the park, grumpy. She wants to do something she is not meant to do because she likes how it feels in the moment. Eat a chocolate or feed a bird. Fickle. Her freckles get darker with her tiny rage and she has tiny clenched fists that she hits the earth with. Mud and tears. Ada's childhood. Ava is mending it. Clumsily, she is finding how to make it work. Clumsily, she takes this rupture, makes a stitch and tricks her sister. The chocolate was not good anyways. The bird was not real. Birds never fly close to us anyways. Ada lets the mud dry on her hands. She watches the heavy trenches form alongside the fleshy lines. The lines are long, smooth, curved to perfection. Like smiles. She laughs. It is now ashy. It can be clapped off, shaken off. The mud is no longer mud. No longer clay. What remains are distant cousins, echoes or something. They laugh and shake it all off. Flesh resurfaces and Ava takes these newly liberated instruments into her own hands and kisses them. Kissing Ada's hands. This is Ava's clearest memory. Mud and kissing. Ada.
*
"I'm imagining Ava has Modigliani eyes by this point, you know?" She does the biggest line and checks for nosebleeds. Clean.
"Yeah, yeah. Fuck Joce, you're so hot when you're not here"
"Not like you babe. Everytime I look you're never there"
*
Max saw Ava melting in clay. Looking soft. Looking like Ada, a little scared, a little lost, a little blurred with the spark that is pain. The spark was always just pain.
Max saw clay-like Ava and found a release.
Adam saw clay-like Ava and went insane. The mud was a little too wet, the likeness a little too close, the face too identical. Too separate.
Max took this rupture and made a stitch.
Adam took this rupture..with him.
Ada came to him once in a dream. He was seeing visions, coloured films, projections of ethereal beings, angels smirking, buzzing icons. She stood outside his window, he was under the tree with her, she was in the bed with him. That seems like centuries ago. There are many years in a day. Ada died mangled and hurting.
*
"Well I just right on told him if he ain't got the soldier in him, then he can pussy on out" Jocey is drawing patterns in the sand and erasing them with both her palms. The sand feels hot and then instantly cold and alien. Hot, then cold and alien. Hot cold alien. Hot cold alien. She's feeling scared and a little excited. This rupture, this very last rupture might just be the most incredible beginning. Tabula Rasa. Hot alien cold. The sand welcomes, then closes off. Stinging and cold. She imagines scorpions in her hair, on her shoulders. Taking small pieces of her flesh, taking everything. Erasing her into the sand until there's only matted gorgeous hair left on the surface. Until she's swallowed by the cold and reunited with the creatures underneath. Until there's nothing but wine and poetry above. Until the gypsies clap into dawn.
She looks pale and white as snow because she misses him. She misses that lonely stranger from long ago who gave her the courage to draw in the sand. To draw images that feared their destruction but stood bold in the golden granules and prayed for the best.
Maria sits like a beautiful sphinx. Unaware of this piece of monologue. Blonde and gorgeous and unmoved, she tans her long legs and her delicious neck and her strawberry nose. Her ocean eyes dip in dip out like waves under the dizzying rays. "Well, I understand Joce but why you gatta always pick the trashy ones? I mean, I know Sam ain't no prize win but at least he's still here. He's not left my side"
How do you compete with that? Against it all, he's never really left her side. Soldiers, solidarity. Security. Blankets, blankets, blankets heavy with water and sun. Blankets to secure her in her place. Blankets to remind her that she's a little girl inside, breaking open to close up harder. Like clay.
*
Ava is melting clay. Ava exists in a world without Ada. The rupture will be mended in the next life. There is nothing left now.
Lady Marguerite showed her the carpet with the blood stain. The room was cold, there were sparrows pecking randomly on the sill. The sequences came slowly. Every word uttered was a desert. The first word
"Ava" followed by clenched jaws. Shadowed eyes. Max - a bent shadow.
She imagined an unbearable heat. Her soles burning on the sand. No cloud, no solace, not a piece of shadow on the planet. No bird in the sky, nothing. Not a drop of water. Scorching. Parched to death.
The second word
"Ada" followed by a pinch in the throat. A pause. Max? Adam - a bent shadow.
An unbearable heat. An unbearable thirst. An inability to breathe. Butterflies. Butterflies pouring from the skies and sinking. Aflame mid-flight. Ashes before hitting hotter ground. Hades. Hades is hell. He breathes fire and forgives nothing.
Third,
"Left"
They're both six or seven. Ada is waiting outside the park, grumpy. She wants to do something she is not meant to do because she likes how it feels in the moment. Eat a chocolate or feed a bird. Fickle. Her freckles get darker with her tiny rage and she has tiny clenched fists that she hits the earth with. Mud and tears. Ada's childhood. Ava is mending it. Clumsily, she is finding how to make it work. Clumsily, she takes this rupture, makes a stitch and tricks her sister. The chocolate was not good anyways. The bird was not real. Birds never fly close to us anyways. Ada lets the mud dry on her hands. She watches the heavy trenches form alongside the fleshy lines. The lines are long, smooth, curved to perfection. Like smiles. She laughs. It is now ashy. It can be clapped off, shaken off. The mud is no longer mud. No longer clay. What remains are distant cousins, echoes or something. They laugh and shake it all off. Flesh resurfaces and Ava takes these newly liberated instruments into her own hands and kisses them. Kissing Ada's hands. This is Ava's clearest memory. Mud and kissing. Ada.
*
"I'm imagining Ava has Modigliani eyes by this point, you know?" She does the biggest line and checks for nosebleeds. Clean.
"Yeah, yeah. Fuck Joce, you're so hot when you're not here"
"Not like you babe. Everytime I look you're never there"
*
Max saw Ava melting in clay. Looking soft. Looking like Ada, a little scared, a little lost, a little blurred with the spark that is pain. The spark was always just pain.
Max saw clay-like Ava and found a release.
Adam saw clay-like Ava and went insane. The mud was a little too wet, the likeness a little too close, the face too identical. Too separate.
Max took this rupture and made a stitch.
Adam took this rupture..with him.
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