Voice Like a Hyacinth

by Mallory Pearson

But she had always been the kind of girl to place the ocean between us, with only her hands and her will to hold the water in place.

“I’m going to cast a spell and sacrifice our enemies and make us the best artists that ever lived.”

I signed the papers—admissions and loans, clauses and acceptances, a lifetime of debt and the chance to make something worthwhile. I committed myself to possibility.

Why did I think my art was anything more important than the others—let alone significant enough to be shown as a Soloist? And how did I ever think I could reach that accolade if I couldn’t even be proud of what I was making?

Relatable

“Like I said, we have to make a sacrifice. It’s not enough to give up something physical of our own. It’s more like . . . we need to be able to live with giving that misfortune to someone else. You gotta be willing to steal someone else’s joy.”

This was my routine. Go to class, stumble into inadequacy, float from room to room and building to building with the hopes that one of my steps might lead me somewhere more meaningfully defined. I was still waiting, still finding no results. There was a permeating doubt at the back of my head wriggling in my mother’s voice: What are you going to do with your future?

Well this is uncomfortably familiar

I was terrified of possibility: how untethered and expansive it was, how there seemed to be no limit to our belief in the potential of magic. I was afraid that this was a precipice we could not walk back from.

I was afraid to open my mouth and let something unforgiveable seep out.

Outside smelled like the dead of fall. I prickled with cold. Leaves blew down the promenade between groups of people milling and laughing, masks abandoned for the contradiction of a cigarette and fresh air.

The dip of the mattress woke me—the distinct sensation of something else’s weight. My first assumption was that Amrita had come to check on me again. But I was pinned by the dregs of sleep paralysis. I couldn’t flip my body around to see what perched behind me. The weight was an imposing pressure beside my feet. Sound wouldn’t leave my mouth no matter how hard I tried, my mind still remembering how to call itself back from REM. Finally, I let out a little hum. Needles prickled all the way down my wrists as my limbs came back to life, and I pushed myself up on my elbows and twisted. Nothing. Just the black room.

Fuck. This is so vivid and horrifying.

I tried to draw them closer to me, my hold on selfhood a loosening grip.

If growth was an endless repetition of leaving them behind, I wanted stagnancy.

There was a lull, the five of us steeping in the quiet.

The Wrangler ate up yellow lines. I looked at the road. I looked at the trees. I looked at the rearview mirror and then back at the road. Was there ever a point when the brain got bored enough to conjure a new vision, to replace the one it was seeing? Fuzzy warmth from the vents made me sleepy and spent. A woman waved at me from the woods. A woman waved at me from the woods? My head snapped up from where it’d nearly drooped to my chest, and the car’s tires roared against the rumble strip. Thudding heartbeats nearly drowned out the stereo I’d cranked up to stay awake.

So well written. Oddly it actually spooked me a little. Go to sleep!

I let her go with my questions unanswered, my mouth unkissed and her blood stiffening the rag on my desk.

I was being so good. I’d almost forgotten I could paint at all.

I kept looking at the beach and forgetting it wasn’t yet summer. The cold found us, no matter where we hid.

We’d come to Rotham in search of more. But I liked good and simple.

Same.

Now I was trying my hardest not to waste time, but it seemed impossible. Where was the delineation between wasted and treasured? Wasn’t time spent with the people you loved worth it enough?

I wanted Caroline. Where was I supposed to put all the love I had for her? Where could I lay its flowers down?

Finally, to all the queer girls. You’re the most important thing in this world. Make art and make magic and love each other beyond words.

Yes!