Ian,
Twelve haggard steps in the snow, and a fire begins in a line, dark beneath the trees where only you could make a wall against me. We rose up to the height of each knoll of trees, the dusk running rapid, milk down a drain. We were girls in summer denims and ill-fitting nylons, testing the limits that all girls have to test, in the darkening woods where the sounds of metal bending popped in the cold as it settled for a night we didn't understand. Was that rain, on the roof?
No. Maybe just the price of all things.
Giddy in teenage glee, I tracked socks the color of South American tree frogs, calves bare and white, thighs thin and unshaven and she laughed. Her hair was blonde. She laughed because I made her laugh. Matthew, I've never been in love like this.
We seeped into the cabin, the wooden walls shutting out a chill and light, the darkness full and round like a held and golden note hovering near 300 hz. How many of us intrude in places we don't belong? Don't signs exist for a reason?
The impish man within teaches fables to young girls, makes morals of them, while I watch. The source of soiled fabrics, stretched and torn, are the folds inside her riding coat; fur stuck with the starvation of her mare where I can tell - I CAN TELL - she crawled within, slick and winter-bellied and it's... well, the reason for the smell.
The blonde curtain of her hair is even, straight, solid, I'm envious of her hair. I watch it move with the rustic sensibility of a sheet on the line. He'll wash her hair, if not the whole of her. I know that, the man and his friends will wash her hair, loving in their application, even if they use objects to stretch every hole she has to tearing. It's the hair, you see, Matthew. It's her lovely blonde and slowly-swinging hair.
The face of her, doll-like in apathy, is the most frightening thing. Is she me, and am I dead already? No, because... because I don't open the gates for strange men. I don't wander small and reckless the streets of the city at night. I know to wait, for the smell of blood and steaming breath tracked by the woman in the red coat. I might have been a queen of Egypt. I might have been a concubine favored among all others in the harem of a sultan. I might have been killed for my lust and my beauty, but I'm this, instead. The rough skeleton of their beautiful refinements, this animal, crouching on the floor... Matthew... I'm the skeletons inside every girl; what makes them all secretly want to die.
The impish man works a knife from his pocket dull and dirty and carves a piece of the girl away like a chicken on the table. The meat of her splits at a grain, fibrous and white, steaming hot, the skin toasted to a tight and dark crispness.
"Have some?" he asks, and I watch another take it, take it grateful as communion but half the sense of wonder. Can you believe, he knew how she would taste?
The voice of your sister distracts me.
"I want to come home," she says. In the garden, I meet her with concern. The air is cool and gray; the relentless chill of early mornings in late spring. She holds her phone in her hand, reflecting early light on the blue of her t-shirt. Her voice is angry and not a request, nor an apology, but steeped in her entitlement.
The lace of the trees against the new and expiring days alike are black and funereal. There is snow, and there is no snow. I'm chilled. The moon is coming. I'm a thing not human. I'm late for my prom. I forgot my homework. I'm going to die. I'm not going to die. As ever, my resolve is to wait.
Love,
Annik
