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To the ones who hunger— for love, for time, or simply to be free
The widow arrives on a Wednesday. María remembers, because Wednesdays are for bathing, and her hair takes an age to dry after it’s been washed and combed. She remembers, because it is warm for the end of April, and she is sitting in a patch of sun at the edge of the yard, sucking on a cherry pit (one of the first of the season) and holding a lock up to the light to see if the hair is turning darker, or if it is simply still damp.
fingers making perfect lines. The trick to sewing, she is always telling her, is patient hands and patient hearts, but María came into this world with neither. She is always pricking herself with the needle, losing her temper and flinging
The way her oldest brother has for the last year, since taking his place. As if that’s all their father was: a set of shoulders, a stoic jaw, a hardened voice. A space he can so easily fill.
“You will learn, it is better to bend than to break.” María stared into the hearth. “Why should I be the one who bends?”
She will never see her family again.
And it turns out there’s no magic threshold, no fresh start, and Alice is still Alice,
Nothing fits, even if it’s fitted, because it’s not really about the size of the body or how it fills the clothes, but how much space it takes up in the world.
And then the girl is ducking her head, curls tickling Alice’s neck, and she feels the kiss as it lands on the bare skin at the open collar of her shirt.
His room, she will soon learn, belongs to him alone, while hers must be ready to hold them both.
“Did you know,” she would say brightly, “that sometimes I think of the cemetery plot where you will lie, beneath all that dirt and stone, and it brings me joy. And if by some unlucky spot I ever get with child, I will take them there, and let them frolic on your bones.”
To that, she has no answer ready. But she will think on it.
“Strange, isn’t it?” she says. “The more you taste, the more you want.”
What was the point, of her imprisonment, her suffering, if only to shed it, run away, with nothing?
“You are too young to be so discontent.”
And just like that, her old life burns.
Her reflection stares back at her, surprised. “Oh,” she says aloud to no one. “Fuck.” She backs away from the mirror, almost laughs. Because it’s ridiculous.
But here’s the thing. Alice is no fool. She was raised on good books and bad TV, and she knows what this looks like, but she also knows that it’s not real. It’s not real, and yet she is, and she’s not sure how to square the two, and there is a word she will not use.
Death is a kind of freedom, after all.
“Bury my bones in the midnight soil,” he begins, infusing the words with the air of theater. “Plant them shallow and water them deep. And in my place will grow a feral rose.” He leans down to Renata and cups her face, running a thumb across her bottom lip. “Soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.”
Sabine has never had a thirst for such small prey, but Renata seems to savor it, likes to sit them on her lap as if they’re hers, rock them to sleep before putting them to bed for the last time.
Disgusting
Like they’re two entirely separate worlds. A different smell, a different taste, a different energy. Now, in the dark, her mind calms and her body uncoils.
Never walk alone at night, they tell you, if you’re a girl. And it isn’t fair. Because the night is when the world is quiet. The night is when the air is clear. The night is wild and welcoming
Perhaps she is a bit nervous. After all, this is a first, and those are always frightening.
“Some people keep their heart tucked so deep, they hardly know it’s there. But you,” she went on, turning back toward Charlotte, “you have always worn it like a second skin.” She ran a hand down her daughter’s arm. “Open to the world. You feel it all. The love and pain. The joy and hope and sorrow.” She pulled Charlotte close, carrying the scent of the garden. Of home. “It will make your life harder,” she said into her daughter’s hair. “But it will also make it beautiful.”
After all, there is no art without life to inspire it.” She tapped her finger on the very tip of Charlotte’s nose. “So go, and be inspired.”
“The world will try to make you small. It will tell you to be modest, and meek. But the world is wrong. You should get to feel and love and live as boldly as you want.”
She is not a lily or a rose. Not a flower ready and waiting to be picked. She is still growing wild at the edges of her family garden.
Charlotte is Orpheus, Sabine, Eurydice. And she does not look back.
She has never been so lonely. So alone. She longs for company, for comfort, for the simple warmth of being held, of being seen, and known.
time is something far less constant. When you are happy, a decade rushes by. When you are sad, a minute crawls. When you are lonely and afraid, time seems to lose all meaning. Blink, and a year is gone. Blink, and it has only been a night.
like a moth to a light,
when she tells Alice that she tastes like winter.
If they could just stay, pressed in the amber of that moment, maybe everything would be okay.
