Her hands were golden, as if baked under runny sun,
Yolk dripping into the palms,
Painting her in ancient warmth
As her fingers held the cigarette to her lips, allowing the aged paper to crack her mouth open
Autumn afternoon senior year ‘08
We stood in the rose colored bathroom,
Laughing over hyperfemininity and profanity,
Words scratched into the crumbling walls like prisoners’ babble,
But her eyes were forever upward, gazing at the black ink mural
Where countless women stood frozen in time
Women huddled close together under a single umbrella,
Women with flowers growing from their skin like additional limbs,
Women staring up at stars drawn on the ceiling, pointing, praying.
There were bodies and bodies covered entirely in faces, each face screaming,
Eyes hanging from strings out of sockets,
Skin distorted and wrinkled and decaying,
Disintegrating into a fervent wind
She was quiet but the drawings were screaming and I knew from the teary-eyed glint in her eyes that they were hers
She spoke of forgotten people and heartbreak but I couldn’t stop thinking about
Her brain
Infinite as the land is wide
She went on about Frida Kahlo, the hundreds of self-portraits mere reflections in the pool of reality
Ripples in the fabric of identity, slippery
Slippery pieces
And I started thinking about her soul
Its curves molding into mine, devouring
People change in subtle, imperceptible ways, she said
And I wanted to inhale her citrus scent, press the slope of her neck to my mouth to whisper
All the earnest things I could never say out loud
You are the best thing about this universe, the most beautiful invention
But my mouth had already crumbled into oblivion, so I handed her my eyes, which blinked
Furiously against the weight of hers
Demanding not to be revealed
The space between us yawned outward into an abyss, where she stood at the other end
Smiling and knowing
But never speaking
Trading her voice for my dignity
Words, she’d say, how superficial
Guarding secrets which she pretended were still mine and not ours,
Gifting me the silent promise of possibility
And doing so without any hesitation
So that one day, when I reached out tentatively into the void                                                                               And it was her soft hand that I touched
Held
I wouldn’t have to close my eyes