POETIC JUSTICE | #Wattys2016

you

when i wake up, sid's bed is empty — but the black hat she had bought sits as a proud dark mass on her white sheets. it's a sight comforting like no other. 

i find her singing softly to herself in the shower. no hair is seen on the toilet seat or sink or under her makeup bag or my pillow. she exits the bathtub with grand flourish, and we settle smooth as water into our old routine: i get toothpaste first, she combs her hair, i finish, she gets toothpaste, i fix my hair; i dress in the closet and she gets ready in the bathroom, and we go together to the cafeteria for breakfast.

just as i open the door, sid announces vaguely that a gentleman was waiting to meet her in the campus green in seven minutes.

"you're going on a date with that guy?" i ask eagerly.

"his name is marco, and yes," she responds blissfully. "we're going to a movie screening his best friend is directing."

"that's so you, sid!" i tease her enthusiastically, pushing her out the door. "go, go, have fun."

"okay, i will," she says wistfully. "i'll see you later, hopefully."

i nod, watching her out the door, before spying the hat on the same place it had been his morning.

"wait, sid, don't you want your hat? it'll give him a hint!"

"no, you have it," she says earnestly. "i don't really need a hat. i don't care how my hair looks."

i smile admiringly at her confidence and wave her off, and then slip into the state of mind that had produced the best canvases i had ever made: serious, reflective, within myself. i had a meeting with the head of artistic recruit and cooperation of literary art today, discussing my future and promise in the company's agenda.

i wear the brightest dress i own — dandelion yellow and purest white, the last thing my mother had ever bought me — and spray the last drops of the strawberry perfume addie always wore and had gifted to me a couple months ago. it feels starkly odd to where things from the two people who had caused me the most stress in my life, but had shaped me in ways i could never alter. and wearing bright things make me feel beautiful, which i have not always been able to do.

- _ - _ -

miss marcotte and i slide across the wide, airy art gallery in rolling chairs for twelve minutes before our conversation begins. helene says it was important that we established an informal relationship so that our formalities would be worth something. she is the type of woman who allures you without you having to even know her name. when i call her miss marcotte, she rolls her eyes and offers helene.

"no one looks at me like a miss, not in this world. i feel more like myself than miss marcotte, anyway. that's my sister. but let me know about you." her accent is a fluid french, faint and silky to the ear.

i began to explain to her why i thought i was perfect for the job — even though she and her team obviously already believed that, for having supplied me with so much in so little time. helene interrupts me halfway and drops her voice an octave in secrecy.

"you don't have to sell anything to me, asami. let's be honest with one another. art is the one field where your honesty can be taken seriously."

so instead i tell her about how people inspired me more than nature but i wanted to go to the beach everyday because the ocean was so full it reminded me of things too beautiful to  just make it up and paint. tell her about how everything i've ever made was painted with mental paintbrushes before they ever appeared on paper in real life; about my arsenal of colors, about how i painted shades in my head that didn't even exist for me to use, about how i whispered my visions into my hands in hopes that they'd achieve them. i found words describing how i felt about classic artists — "just too great to be real, it feels like, do you think van gogh even thought about doing things other than paint?" — and how i was scared that the things that meant the most to me would fail anywhere else but in my basement, or on a classroom easel. i feared my extraordinary would be only ordinary in the public lens. i found magic in bloody reds and slanted lines, but my eyes have always been different than the rest of the world's.

"that's how i felt too, until i realized that it's okay to be regular. people like to find themselves in other people, just explained better. sometimes i think that's the point of the arts. to present ourselves normally, but a more beautiful normal."

i realize then that helene's purpose is in the literary side of literary art. verbosity was her paintbrush. i promise myself to tell addie about this place later.

"if you want to see what i've been working on," she says, handing me a folder, shy for the first time since we had met.

"you don't have to say anything today, but you do have to submit a draft by next week," she tells me, looking vulnerable and nervous.

this is the writer's form of the artist's sketch superstition. it won't be good unless it's completed.

"i'll only read what i can tell is one-hundred-percent finished," i assure her. "i know how you feel."

"thank you," she says meaningfully. "it was wonderful meeting you, asami. we'll be in touch."

i lumber away from helene and the literary arts co. building happily, my hands itching to rifle through her portfolio for the best piece to paint first.

where helene uses sharp words i replace sharper colors — matching poison with black-purple, which oozes down the page. underground sadness as midnight blue. nothingness as white slashed over like a knife-wound.

the poem was called sœur, sister. i cannot imagine what could had happened to her to created something so sad, but it must have been worse than anything i had experienced.

i flick open my cellphone at the prompting of a buzzbuzz to find thirty-nine missed calls and voicemail from sid. i smile. the date must have went exceptionally well. 

— 

can u tell that im trying to keep this story from being bad and failing miserably??¿¿