"Is this our resort? I've never had love, been loved. Are my frantic scribbles to some sort of god, are they listened to, are they heard? When I die, will I be ignored, or welcomed with loving hands and arms, then? Is my only relief of some sort of half lived sucked dry existence not in life itself, but death? And when that day comes will I greet it with love myself? Will I welcome it with loving hands and arms and collapse?"
This girl runs a hand through her hair, tousled by drunken heat.
Outside, the noise of night-a melody of fuzz and sound, reverberates across the water. The boathouse has a common area above- and a bottom section where a sturdy mahogany sailing boat sits, gently nudging the concrete sides of the mooring.
The second girl hugs a pillow to her stomach.
"I feel as if I were burned in the past, turned into ash, swept into soil. Like my insides were ladled into a brass jar and I've been sitting, watching over a mantle, surrounded by fine bone china. And if they finally scattered my ashes, they'd see there was more to me. I could dance in the wind as a last goodbye."
The girl who lived here, she smiled. "In some sort of poetry. But would you say goodbye? If you had the chance? Or would you just simply pass into the night. Retreat into blankness. My family, I don't think they'd even realise. They would carry on laying the table, setting a placemat out. They'd find remnants of their daughter, without realising I'd been long gone. I could drown myself in soil and they'd admire the flowers."
A breeze knots itself into the girl's long hair, the wail of night- chilling and almost ominous, the moon watery and pale.
"Let's swim. Let's swim in the lake." This girl finished off her wine.
"We'll go in whatever we want. We'll wear whatever. I'll wear my scarf." The second girl put down the pillow, her initials scratched into the weak fabric.
"I'll wear this dress. It's floaty and light. I won't drown." The girl grasped the pale silk of her night gown.
"I'll wear nothing. I'm giving myself up."
The three went down to the side of the lake, the grass pressing into the heels of their feet. They trailed fabrics across the lawn, traced warm fingers on the skin of their throats. They stepped one foot into frigid water, pearled necks, glistening eyes. Fingers went numb, lips went blue, rosemary in the air. Her mother grew fennel in the garden, and roses on the wall. They were embraced by beauty, filled with words. They wanted nothing, felt everything, wine tinged lips, stinging teeth. Their temples were drowsy, their mouths awake. Skin was alive, hair silky. They hummed into water, floated in the bay. They were drunk and young and foolish.
Later into the night, they collapsed onto towels and silken blankets. Their hair dripped into their laps. They sung into midnight, danced into dusk.
YOU ARE READING
FEMANIA
General Fiction❝ it was like the words had been ready to spill at any minute and this moment, with the cherry laced smoke from the new cigarette, and the fresh sweetgrass on the breeze from the school field, the coolness of the Formica tiles on her thighs, and the...
