|
His Blue Tear
"I can"t, no," he tells her, as if it were the time.
The pupil of her good eye--not hidden by her velvet patch--dilates, until its lean iris burns
like a purple sun in eclipse. This eye, its almond traced in dark blue (stippled a bit on the
lower edge), moistens and glossily swells, while its high-arched lid, shaded a rich sky blue,
retracts slowly. At the outer corner, where fine wrinkles radiate into the poreless skin of
an almost drowned whiteness, her new color has caked; and three sky blue crumbs adhere to the
lashes she thickened with black and curled for him. The low vein that arcs across her glistening
cornea shows like a fine red scratch.
Now at the inner corner of her eye the juicy tear brims over. Bright and slow, bearing a smudge of blue,
it flows down her strenuously dieted cheek like a raindrop on a window pane. Encountering the mole above
her upper lip--how her full-cut lips look puffy this morning, and dry underneath the matte scarlet that
is too dark for her, he really should tell her--the tear lingers like a working bee, then slips down
into the crevice of her lips.
Twitching, her lips part; and her pointed tongue-tip flicks up, catches the tear, wipes it away, when
he wanted that tear for himself.
Eau de Joy
Behind the mirror's condensation, the big white shape rubs itself.
She doesn't peer at her body, which lifts one knee to polish away dry skin with the towel's corner, stops:
a fruity perfume, when she never uses the stuff.
Leftover, in this clutter of allergy pills and ointment tubes?
Here's "Eau de Joy". That's rich: the gold top dented, the lettering worn, the
label peeling right to left like a page. A teaspoon of honey's color remains in the dusty-shouldered flask,
whose top feels tight.
She wrings it open, and the atomizer's mouth makes a golden "O." Without pressing down
she sniffs--and meadows green and gold come shining to her, under the shiplike clouds of Provence.
If you dig with your fingers, our soil's dark as chocolate; and when it crumbles it smells like musk.
Who gave her this? Kurt buys her books. Did Emily leave it, visiting? Has it been standing here
for years? Why didn't she notice, with her allergies? She'll throw the bottle away today; it's ugly.
But who was that man again, with the curly black hair she met on the Paris train? She smiles: his long
fine hands, with their almond nails. The corners of her mouth pull tight. Seventeen years ago. God.
Lifting her chin, she gazes at her own bloated remains in the mirror. She cups her pendulous breasts,
strokes their tips and snorts. She poses the bottle with its label to the mirror, and tosses her creamy
towel down, for the maid to pick up later.
Suzanne Sykora
Email: Suzanne Sykora
Return to Table of Contents
|