Her Hair
He ran his fingers through her hair and said, I love your hair, never cut it. Then, he smiled. He looked into her eyes and said, your eyes are so blue, so deep. She was sitting on his lap. Her chest to his. Her face resting against the side of his face. He was gripping her with both his arms and he said, you are so wild. When she asked what made her wild, he answered by taking another draw on his joint. Months later, she asked again, and even then, no answer. This, she found so frustrating, the not answering, the comments that suggested intimacy, love even, with no attempt to go deeper and deeper is always, always where she desired to go.Deeper and deeper still.
When she was a little girl, she felt exposed all the time and words came out of her mouth in reaction to her imagined or not, exposure and then, people hated her and the silence commenced. Her goal became to cover herself, go underground, not be seen, and so, she learned to be fictitious. There she hid. There she imagined she’d be safe. She was successful and she wasn’t. Her body never let her escape her lies and she lied. Asking questions always, always revealed she wasn’t who she seemed.
The tension undid her. She was wild. (Everyone knew.)
White by Amy Kaplan
1.
The room is white. Directly in front of the bed, there is a wall of windows facing the sea. To the right and the left of the bed, half of each wall, are windows. The bed is very wide and long. The bed is wide and long enough for a man, a woman, and a child to sleep in comfortably. The linens and the comforter are white. There are four pillows, white. Two of the pillows rest against the headboard and two are for sleeping on. Looking out the windows, the sand is white, the ocean is white, made white from sunshine and further out, dark, maybe blue.
The first night in that white room, in that white large bed, she sleeps well and wakes around dawn feeling as if she in a fairy tale and maybe, her life will always be this way now.
The next day, she takes a long walk in the beach. The beach is strewn with garbage and a large gnawed-at carcass of some animal. The carcass stinks. She can smell it as she approaches it. That night, the humming of the fish processing plant wakes her and keeps her awake and the darkness descends again despite all the white that she is immersed in.
Still, she dreams. Still, she longs for a wall of windows facing a landscape white, clean, that she can walk into and live in. Live in some way, unfettered and smiling as she walks, only the sweetly scented breeze following her.
2.
Instead there’s one bed after another after another in one house after another, after another, all not her’s, all with windows not facing anywhere at all. Rooms full of other people’s things and junk and smells, illusions, wishes, dreams. Rooms full of the constant, haunting question with no answer: how do you make a home when the black dog, no, a black dog is biting at your ankles and won’t stop ever even when he takes your treat?
3.
Instead, a man who is part of that place, says, full of anger, right anger, that they need to shut that place down. Now.
She walks on because there is nothing else to do but that.
He ran his fingers through her hair and said, I love your hair, never cut it. Then, he smiled. He looked into her eyes and said, your eyes are so blue, so deep. She was sitting on his lap. Her chest to his. Her face resting against the side of his face. He was gripping her with both his arms and he said, you are so wild. When she asked what made her wild, he answered by taking another draw on his joint. Months later, she asked again, and even then, no answer. This, she found so frustrating, the not answering, the comments that suggested intimacy, love even, with no attempt to go deeper and deeper is always, always where she desired to go.Deeper and deeper still.
When she was a little girl, she felt exposed all the time and words came out of her mouth in reaction to her imagined or not, exposure and then, people hated her and the silence commenced. Her goal became to cover herself, go underground, not be seen, and so, she learned to be fictitious. There she hid. There she imagined she’d be safe. She was successful and she wasn’t. Her body never let her escape her lies and she lied. Asking questions always, always revealed she wasn’t who she seemed.
The tension undid her. She was wild. (Everyone knew.)
White by Amy Kaplan
1.
The room is white. Directly in front of the bed, there is a wall of windows facing the sea. To the right and the left of the bed, half of each wall, are windows. The bed is very wide and long. The bed is wide and long enough for a man, a woman, and a child to sleep in comfortably. The linens and the comforter are white. There are four pillows, white. Two of the pillows rest against the headboard and two are for sleeping on. Looking out the windows, the sand is white, the ocean is white, made white from sunshine and further out, dark, maybe blue.
The first night in that white room, in that white large bed, she sleeps well and wakes around dawn feeling as if she in a fairy tale and maybe, her life will always be this way now.
The next day, she takes a long walk in the beach. The beach is strewn with garbage and a large gnawed-at carcass of some animal. The carcass stinks. She can smell it as she approaches it. That night, the humming of the fish processing plant wakes her and keeps her awake and the darkness descends again despite all the white that she is immersed in.
Still, she dreams. Still, she longs for a wall of windows facing a landscape white, clean, that she can walk into and live in. Live in some way, unfettered and smiling as she walks, only the sweetly scented breeze following her.
2.
Instead there’s one bed after another after another in one house after another, after another, all not her’s, all with windows not facing anywhere at all. Rooms full of other people’s things and junk and smells, illusions, wishes, dreams. Rooms full of the constant, haunting question with no answer: how do you make a home when the black dog, no, a black dog is biting at your ankles and won’t stop ever even when he takes your treat?
3.
Instead, a man who is part of that place, says, full of anger, right anger, that they need to shut that place down. Now.
She walks on because there is nothing else to do but that.