belles lettres

bel-le-truh (n.): literature regarded as a fine art, especially as having a purely aesthetic function ask the writing you see is all my original writing and is licensed under Creative Commons. please do not take them as yours when they are clearly not.

[pheere]

Suehiro Maruo’s depiction of Saint Sebastian

[hadrian6]

Orpheus.  1998. John Woodrow Kelley. American. 1952-    oil/canvas.  http://hadrian6.tumblr.com

[belleslettres]

asphyxiate

Every time that you leave a room, smoke lingers in the air behind you (a cigarette, a blown out candle, hope caught in flames—no one is ever sure) and makes everything else hazy. Whatever words they hoped to say spluttered on their lips like water droplets caught in the tongue of a little flame. You are voracious and volatile but— you aren’t a wildfire. You aren’t a wildfire and I think you know this. Is that why you leave as much smoke as you can in your wake? If you can’t consume someone you will asphyxiate them. It’s close enough isn’t it?

[belleslettres]

these moments that define us

Bragging, for some reason, is a luxury afforded to the poor. And that is odd, considering the rich are used to being able to buy whatever luxury they please. But nonetheless, bragging is for the poor and the rich are expected to extol virtues like humbleness while driving shiny cars and living in palatial mansions that glistened and glittered. Andre recognizes the hypocrisy, but at the end of the day he has one of those shiny cars and was fortunate enough to live in one of those palatial mansions and he learned very young not to bite the hand that feeds you. ---- Andre met Thu in an upper division literature class and only managed to become friends with her because he missed a class once and had to ask her for her notes. She slid her notebook over to him amiably enough, but hadn’t said anything other than ‘you’re welcome’ in response to his thank you. They sat next to each other every class after that day (or rather, Andre sat next to her every class since that day) and they learned not only about Chaucer and Keats but also about each other. He learned that the legitimate pronunciation of her name was not ‘to’ but rather contains a sort of diphthong, an odd deepening pitch on the ‘u’ that he absolutely butchers. She learned that his mother is a Spaniard and his father is a Scottish-Israeli mix and that is how Andre Shahaf gets his name and his thick, ruddy brown hair, hazel eyes, and sloped nose. He learned she is here on a scholarship and studies like a fiend to maintain it. She learned that his father is some sort of business tycoon and his mother is a successful artist. He learned that she enjoys chicken and waffles. She learned that he is allergic to strawberries. She learned that he shivers when she litters kisses on the nape of his neck. He learned that she shudders when he licks the inside of her thigh. They learn each other. ---- The day he realizes that she has a toothbrush stuck his toothbrush holder, he should have had his first sneaking suspicion. The day her books started to litter his coffee table, his counter, his bedroom floor, he should have started paying attention. The day he sees her punch in the password to his laptop, he should have known. They’re hurtling head first towards something domestic and they both don’t want that because Andre and Thu know that this isn’t something that’ll last. He’s been with her for six months now and she still won’t tell him what her parents do for work out of either pride or shame or a little combination of both. She won’t let him pay for anything of hers other than the occasional meal and when things are truly bitter between them, she scowls and spits, “I’m not some charity case.” There’s too much between them. Too much pride, too much ambition, too much expectation. Andre wants to say there’s too much love, but he’s realistic. Still, she lets herself into his apartment without calling ahead of time. She makes his coffee the way he likes it. He folds up her discarded sweaters and puts them in his dresser. He plays with her hair because he knows it calms her when they’re on the verge of falling asleep in his bed. They’re sitting together on the couch. She reads and he watches a movie. Thu waits until he glances at her—he always stole glances at her and acts like he doesn’t—before she throws the book at him. He flounders, barely catching it by its front cover. “Read to me,” she commands. For now, he is content to let her push her feet into his lap, tucking them under his shirt and against his warm stomach. For now, he is content to read to her.

[belleslettres]

forget me knot

She sees him furiously tying fishing line together, making quick over-under-figure eight shapes until his hands are a blur. He sniffles, but she thinks it might just be all the dust in this old shed. She doesn’t look too closely to be sure. “What are you doing?” Her voice is quiet enough that it gets lost in the space, whirling around the little room before burrowing itself into an old boot without a pair or an empty coffee can, entirely missing its mark. She has to repeat herself, a little more sharply, and she sees his hands falter in their knotting. He doesn’t stop. Her brow furrows. “Christopher!” He jumps, and instantly she knows it’s too sharp, too loud. Something in the air splinters and she’s too young to know what it is, but not too young to know some boundary has been over stepped. She whispers, “…Sorry.” Christopher resumes what he’s doing. He doesn’t look at her when he snaps, “What do you want?” She smooths the skirt of her black dress and tiptoes over to him, trying not to kick up dust. His face is smudged with it, as is the white button-down shirt that came untucked from his pants. His tie is gone—she guesses it was a clip on because he never showed her he could tie a real tie—and so is his jacket. She bends at the waist and watches his hands tie knots. “What are you doing?” "Tying knots." "Oh." She’s only eight, but she can understand that the ‘why’ on the tip of her tongue shouldn’t be said. She stays bent until her back aches and she finally sits down on the dusty floor, cross-legged beside him. After she sits, and only once a few minutes pass, he murmurs, “He taught me how. But never how to tie a tie.” The laugh that he laughs isn’t a normal laugh because it sounds like he’s about to cry and it makes her feel like crying too. “Why are you tying those?”

“So I don’t forget. He used to tell me when we went camping that if I got lost, to just sit and practice my k-knots and he’ll come find me.” He starts to cry. “He won’t find me anymore, Lily. He’ll never find me anymore.” She hugs him and he clutches at her arms until the sunlight that filters through the window darkens to a dusky purple. His mother finds them asleep on the floor of the shed, knotted fishing line connecting their limp fingers together.

[belleslettres]

fallow

She peels secrets from him as if she were peeling a clementine. She drops pieces and bits to the floor her hands sticky, bitter to the taste, but smelling pleasant. He looks at her, raw and naked, and asks if this is enough. She says no. No, never enough. It is never enough. It will never be enough.

She cleans her fingernails of residue washes her hands and then plants seeds of him in ground she never plowed.

[belleslettres]

china doll

I had a boyfriend once ask if I was ‘gon love him long time’ and why the word gook made my face steely and my hands murderous. I had a boyfriend who once told me that I looked like Lucy Liu, Mulan, Michelle Yeoh, Brenda Song, like that girl from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon like a china doll and he couldn’t figure out why I didn’t think it was a compliment. He asked me what my American name was assuming that I had one and he asked me what my Asian name was thinking that I had one.

[belleslettres]

verboten

When he fucks her he pulls the skirt of her dress high enough that it somewhat covers her face. He uses a wide palm to press both her wrists above her head, Her cries are lilting, lofty, a crescendo that makes the air above them waver. She moans his name, writhes, and he cannot look at her. In this life he has had many things. Women, fast cars, good liquor that goes down smooth, but inevitably his women always told him that he had no heart. He still wants to avoid looking her in the eye. He focuses on the peeling wallpaper that is yellowed and stained. Because though he has no heart, things have a habit of getting lost in her eyes and he doesn’t want to chance it.

[belleslettres]

where your head was once

In more ways than one, he’s naked and twisted in the sheets of her bed. His hair, dark like a chalkboard and oddly just as dusty, is touchable, mussed in a way upon her pillowcase that makes him seem juvenile.

Innocent.

The lilac flat sheet of her bed is looped around his legs, exposing knobby knees and strong, thick calves. It covers his waist, but shows off a lean, stretched torso, arms flung back and reaching towards the headboard. She can climb his ribs like a ladder and imagines that she sees the skin above his beating heart twitch. If she were kinder, she’d run the tip of her index finger up the middle of his chest, cup the side of his neck and gently brush her lips across his.

She sighs, pulling her legs closer to her. The edge of the dresser she’s perched on digs uncomfortably into the bottom of her feet, but she doesn’t budge. She catches her reflection in the vanity across the room, the nightlight she has plugged in softening her face with shadows. It makes her seem diminutive.

Vulnerable.

She lets her feet drop off the edge of the dresser and sets the wine glass she had in her hand down hard enough that she worries for a fleeting second that she broke the stem. She stands, shrugging into a sweater that was on the floor, and leaves the room.

She misses a sliver of misty eyes, watching her movement until she disappears from sight with a sudden sharp turn. She misses his sigh, and the way he turns over onto his stomach, hiding his heart with the mattress. 

[belleslettres]

good things come

I tell you three things:

I am no treasure chest and there are no priceless jewels locked up within me. There are no rubies or emeralds, no gold coins to indent with your teeth, no pearls to finger. There is a heart and it beats strong and steady with no need of your hands to cup it.

I am no caged bird that perches in a gilded cage singing forlorn songs. I have a voice that screams and my body could never be contained in wrought metal. Fury will always trump delicacy.

I am no sea to your moon. I do not swell and fall according to how you wax and wane. I am a fist, gnashing teeth, nails dragged down skin to leave bloody welts.

I do not love you. My love, I do not love you.

[belleslettres]

it's a life story, man

I don’t want you to tell me that our hands fit perfectly together because they don’t; my fingers are a little too skinny to fill the spaces of yours and you’re a little too tall for our hands to dangle together naturally and the cadence of our walk doesn’t match at all so the swing of our arms are more cacophony than symphony. I don’t want you to tell me I’m perfect because I’m not. You’ll remember this when I’m suddenly angry for no reason, when I use all your lucky pennies to buy a pregnancy test or when I listen only halfheartedly to the dreams and aspirations you tell me about. You’ll remember I’m not perfect because I’ll remind you. I like it when you tell me I’m beautiful but I’ll insist that I’m not because of a pimple here or a bulge there or a god look at my hair today it’s a mess! I like it when you touch me but I’ll shy away from it when our friends are around in an effort to preserve my image. I like it when you smile at me and, secretly, I ferret the image away to look at later, in private. I don’t want you to tell me we’ve got a love story because we don’t. We have a life story and you damn well better remember it.

[belleslettres]

sorek

When I first saw death I could not recognize her for what she was. She came upon my grandfather like a dream stick-thin and dark-skinned shining and took him away as gently as snowfall. At the wake I refused to go near the casket so my father stood with me an immobile chess piece, a rook carved from opal while my mother anguished over a rotting body wreathed in flowers that withered with each passing moment. Her hair spilled over the ivory casket like the black paint I once accidentally knocked onto the drawing I drew for my aunt and I cried beside my father because I remembered how I could not take the mistake of the black paint away and this somehow felt like that. The next day my mother lopped off her beautiful black hair and let me run my hands through what was left. Because I was a child I thought of summer and how fitting short hair would be when the hot weather came and I never saw the way my mother cried as she threw the strands of shorn hair over the grave of my grandfather.

[belleslettres]

apocryphal

I have mostly forgotten how these things go. Should I genuflect in your presence? Should I hide my face, my hair, my skin? Should I read the lines in your good book and do deeds in your name? You speak to me but there is expectation in your eyes and I have no desire to fulfill it. You the god you the savior, I do not think that you posses the patience nor the resilience of a martyr to wait for me. Like Salome I will request a gift upon silver. Will you be the king o king of kings to grant it?

[belleslettres]

godless

I have forgotten what it means to be soft. The cloak I drape round my shoulders is forged of bent nails and affectations. I wear an armor made of molten malice and visors that narrow my sight to devastated cityscapes. My gauntlets are formed from pieces of scrapped steel, some of the pieces having edges that glisten like starlight and can cut as wicked and true as any blade. I dress myself like this because I want to be vicious. I want to be strong. I want to be fleet-footed war, dancing through destruction but in reality I am a child knocking over building blocks, thinking he is a god, crying when the corner of a block bites into his unarmored foot. 

[belleslettres]

peace when you are done

I am not the child who stood at the top of the slide and proclaimed total, worldwide domination. I am instead the one who said, “We are going there,” though I walked to the monkey bars alone. Instead of latching onto the bars I crawled above them, stepping my feet on the rungs as I balanced precariously between innocence and knowledge. I am the child who feared padded floors because they had too much give. They were mushy and unpredictable. The foam was too soft to support me and I rolled my ankle on them often. I had an abundance of faulty foundations and I did not need anymore. I am the child who grasped Whoppers in both fists and shoved them into my mouth so that I couldn’t speak without leaking malt powder and spit out the sides of my lips. That was the only way I could say sweet things. I am not the child who had stars in her eyes or gentleness in her heart but neither did I have fear or bigotry. I am not the child who knew that forts were the best for sleeping in with friends but I did know loyalty is a gift as much as it is a reward—definitely earned, but not always given. My mother taught me how to braid hair but whenever I try all I end up with are knots. My father taught me how to mend bridges but matches have a way of lighting in my hands. I taught myself how to trust but everyone else showed me that it is so much easier not to. 

[belleslettres]

luck will have courage be the last to leave

My name is Arden McCaughey and I am a journalist being held hostage. I will be killed in twenty minutes. I am a McCaughey and it is so cold here all the time. The meager water they give me is coppery and gritty, full of some type of sediment or dirt. I get cold food that leaves my mouth tasting of dust. Of death. I’m Arden and though my name is strong, I want to be a Mary, as in Mary, Queen of Scots. In twenty minutes I want to stare those sons of bitches in the face and smile graciously, incline my head and say, “I hope you make an end of all my troubles.” Because these bastards can use a goddamned lesson in hospitality and, believe me, I’ve told them several times. Sometimes I was called beautiful, and at one time I was. But not now. My hair was silky and lush. It gleamed. Now it is cropped short and the strands that were once smooth and thick have turned brittle and dry; every time I run my hand through the sparseness I feel like I pull clumps of my hair out, leaving spots that are completely bald. I wonder if these people can see straight into my brain and pick out the names I call them. I wonder if that is why their punches land harder than ever. My skin was tanned and supple. But gone is the golden tinge because it is now mottled with shades of blue, purple, green. It is marred with scars and scabs and it is dry and cracked like the plaster of this dilapidated room. I feel like if I cough, a cloud of dust would rise from it. My name is Arden McCaughey and I am so, so afraid. I am afraid of the pain and of the idea of a bullet and even though a shot to the head would probably be the least agonizing, I can’t imagine taking a bullet in the back of the head so that it blows out the front of my face. I don’t want to, but I imagine the front of this dingy white jerkin they gave me stained red and I think Mary oh Mary oh bloody, bloody Mary you thought you were a martyr but your spirit will not rest because little children will summon you in a bathroom mirror (I think that’s the right Mary) and I want to be brave but I have no terrier to hold to me. My name was Arden McCaughey and I am so scared and I am about to be shot and I am afraid of pain and the indignity of death. I am afraid I will never be as brave as Mary and that when I am staring into the rust colored sky of the rising sun I will not say, “I hope you make an end of all my troubles” but rather “Dear God please don’t shoot.”

[belleslettres]

the fools

I want to pry open your jaw with a vice and attach a headlamp to myself so that I can peer down your throat and see if butterflies truly exist in your stomach. I want to know if, when I hit you hard enough, you will bruise black and blue or green and yellow. Then I want to kiss the pain away with lips that I smeared with scarlet lipstick and tell you that this is the nature of love. I want to splay your fingers and pin them down to a table in front of me just to tell you that your lifeline is a little faint, but your love line is emblazoned across the meat of your palm like a brand. I want to lay tarot cards in front of you in a neat cross and show you The Lovers, The Tower, The Hanged Man and perhaps swords and cups. I want you to answer to no one, but I’d like you to remember that we are all fools in the eyes of gods. I want to deliver your salvation to you but only after you’ve been properly damned.