Nothing But Blackened Teeth

by Cassandra Khaw

It wasn’t charitable but apologies didn’t exonerate the sinner, only compelled graciousness from its recipient.

And when she laughed, low like a note in a cello’s long throat, it was as if she had been the one to teach the world the sound.

How many dead and dismembered women laid folded in these walls and under these floors, in the rafters that ribbed the ceiling and along those broad steps, barely visible in the murk?

One girl each year. Two hundred and six bones times a thousand years. More than enough calcium to keep this house standing until the stars ate themselves clean, picked the sinew from their own shining bones.

More than anything else, I was tired. Tired of being unhappy, and even more tired of feeling sorry for the fact that I was unhappy.

Suenomatsuyama nami mo koenamu. A whisper, so quiet the cerebellum wouldn’t acknowledge its receipt. The words were drowned by the reverb of Faiz’s voice calling, an afterimage, an impression of teeth on skin. We exited the room, the future falling into place behind us. Like a wedding veil, a mourning caul. Like froth on the lip of a bride drowning on soil.

I’d thought it was stupid at first. But as we told stories of drowned things and hungry ones, it started to make sense. There was power here, even if it was of our own invention.