Belle Line
Jessica Ahrens
Her smeared porcelain face haunts me when I am immobile, and she does not need to strain a socket to have me in her grasp. The once rosy tint on her cheeks has since faded, and the crack where Mother had dropped her spreads like mint roots, cruel to tame others in the garden. Aureate flowers close their petal hearts as if the sky has blackened, and a thorn prickle lets out a sly whistle as the earth moans.
When her face falls, it swallows me into the void where I am alone, just as she was. The space is starless and cold, not even oxygen to keep me company in breath. She wants me to know how she felt.
There is not a sound, but the message whispers clear—and then I wake and she is watching me from the shoebox tucked away in the attic, woven over by the eight-legged silk runners. She can see through the floorboards and knows what I am.
I part my lips, and trails of air are coaxed down my lungs, reminding me that I still live. In this hollow home, where only crickets roam, and the full moon of the night observes my plight. Her stitched smile must be so vilely contorted, as if a needle is plotting to cut a hole and tie a ribbon to bind us together, signed by fate. Yet, she is no longer my only friend.
My fingers crawl to the chantilly lace hemmed-on satin that has kept me company over all the years, which now clings to the sweet skin of my company for the night. The woven texture abrades my papillary ridges as they trail to meet hers, then her resting, soft visage. Her face is as kind when her eyes are shut and a daisy snore escapes with each rise of her chest, as when she is dispersing nature’s stars in a single blow—auxiliary of the meadow willing the legacy of the dandelion’s glow. It does her well, given she is set to inherit her family’s apothecary store at any of the rising suns and moons.
She was there when mine was thrust into my hands, broad tombstone still and cold beneath my pounding palms. And, she was there with a comfrey salve to tend to the shallow wounds, us two in the manor as we are now.
The crows would find it peculiar that twelve moon cycles have lapsed, and she lies in my bed again, chiffon draped in frills. Yet, we stand the same, dear friends, but nothing more. The walls are stiffening, and she belongs among the forest’s breeze. I am not sure where to be besides the tile floors. The same blood that settled the ceiling that keeps the pattering rain from falling on my head flows in my veins, and out every month.
When I return from the lavatory, my feet chilled from the ground, my dear Agoseris is seated on the edge of the canopy. Her eyes are bright, but bleary, a doe calling her back to her sugared plum dreams.
“What are you doing awake, Camilla?” I ask.
“I could ask the same of you, Aveline.”
I take my place beside her and brush a loose strand back to her flaxen crown. She could rule my heart with a single spark. Her parched voice spreads dry timber and grass with twisted sticks.
“A nightmare—you know how they are.”
Of course she does. It was why she had admonished that I needed more than my sadness in rest. She takes my hand with hers, especially warm.
“You should have woken me.”
“It seems I already did so.”
She sighs and takes me in her arms. Her breasts weigh against my own, and I sink into the plush comfort. Camilla croons a songbird’s tune, the same one that we used to bellow in the fields with young limbs inventing new tricks for which to sing.
I am an artist pulled with string tension and electronic repulsion to the brink of instability, though I argue that's where invention begins. All reactions start with a collision, whether artificially simulated or biological, including as you read this right now! Words are my favorite medium. I experiment, distill, boil, broil, and toil even when I am not in the lab.