Oh oh! Also emotional narrations! Emotional dialog scenes too, but narration scenes? Those will be my thing every time, because I love poetry, and it spills out in the way I write Alicia's thoughts in "Damsel in the Red Dress" and also the narration in "Hushabye Prince"
It feels weird to be riding the elevator this late at night - my mind is brought back to the award show - leaving that hotel we never actually spent the night in at a quarter to 8, wearing that blood-red dress.
It was already pitch black by the time we left for the venue because of the season. The sun set while we were getting me ready for the ceremony.
In retrospect it tastes like a warning - but retrospect doesn’t help anything.
I’m only 28.
That’s not old to anyone but the Gen Zs and grade school babies who call everyone older than them “boomers,” regardless of their age.
But I don’t feel young.
Maybe it’s just because I’ve had so much horror packed into this itty-bitty life. Pack-ratted into the corners and spilling out of this itty-bitty shell.
I’m almost 29.
That feels like a long time.
And it doesn’t.
The years went slowly until they were gone.
My time is dilating.
Every Tomorrow is born as a ‘yesterday.’
And sometimes, late at night, I wonder if that’s a bad sign.
A sign it’s almost over.
Maybe the ending is always deceptively close. The older I get the less difference there is between tomorrow and next year.
I burned them all away waiting…
For him. For them. For her.
I run my fingers gently over the places the wrinkles will be the next time I blink, and wonder if I have enough time left in this castle of ice we call Life to make realities of all the things that are still only daydreams.
When he came to find me the first time, after the breakup, I was blanketed by this same fog - ebony bubble - tangible shadows made of osmium and lead. I was a wilted dryad, flower fairy, nymphalid, a dying tree, emblazoned with fall colors in the paint stains on my face - on my dress. The lights were off, the blinds, drawn. The air was so old it was almost poisonous.
He crawled through the midst of it all to sit down beside me - shoving aside the crusted paint palettes, and half a dozen brushes bloodied with morbid shades of red acrylic, watercolor - dirty water-
I had a half-finished version of “Bed of Roses,” smeared across the canvas, dizzy with roses, and spiritless thorns, at that point, perfectly dry, with red clinging to the easel in runny scabs. Burgundy stains in the styrofoam beads I’d torn to shreds in one of many temper tantrums. Those paint-filled cups of toxic water standing paralyzed on the coffee table bleeding stagnant greens from the tops of their furry heads like worthless artifacts of “The Great Heartbreak” that changed the course of our histories forever.
I still had a brush in hand, though only Heaven knows how long I’d been lying there in my stupor. Not eating, not drinking. Water anyway.
The only difference between then and now is that he’s not-
Not coming to save me.
Nobody’s coming to pull me out of the dark.