He’s thought about her naked before. Hasn’t he? Surely, all the fantasizing, the watching–he must have. But if he did, then how did he imagine she’d look?
He’s on the roof, alienated as usual. Below him, they’re all piling into the pool: drunk, high, naked. It’s very late but still warm. “Skinny dipping”–that makes him think of being seven, his cousins and the pond at the farm. For some reason it’s seemed an innocent term until now.
Holly’s naked, her face flushed with wine. A thousand hours she’s lived in his head: can he really have had no expectations?
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
After a while it’s like she can see them wash each other away: sucking cold when the doors open, sharp heat when they close. This happens every two to five minutes, and she’s grown to like the variety.
It’s like this every winter for five winters now, every day but Wednesday (the bus runs even on Christmas). It’s weathering her face. At night she can almost see the tiny spread of her new laugh lines.
Vanetta doesn’t get desperate with lotion, doesn’t buy hydroxy cremes. Let her face find age: let her reduce, crease, dessicate, leave a happy old-apple shrunken head.
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
Dark before day. Fear before joy. Coal before light.
They said the words over her when she was born, and smeared her head with ash. She sneezed and wailed. She didn’t like it.
Her hair kept trying to grow out fair, and whenever it straggled to an inch they’d hack it off. Finally, after six years, it’s starting to darken: blonde, honey, mahogany brown.
She hates her hair, hates more when they cut it. She weeps silently afterwards.
There’s always one who will speak to a hurt child, in darkness. “There, there, little Nightjar,” soothes hers. “Someday we’ll find your voice.”