Avielle
You tainted my name.
You let it escape from your lips, and stained it with the blood of the women you've hurt: your wife, your daughter, your mistresses, your friends, your neighbors. Avielle.
"Avielle."
I don't know that name, nor do I like it. It's unfamiliar, and it hurts my head.
It sounds like screaming. It sounds like a sin.--It sounds like you.
"Avielle."
It makes me want to run and hide. It makes me want to vomit.
It’s not mine.
"Avielle."
I hear it whispered (or was it shouted?), and I watch as my mother's lips shape the word
"Avielle."
But the voice doesn't belong to her. She pronounces it wrong (or does she?). She looks at me but her face is a mirror showing my own reflection. I tell the woman in the face-mirror that I don't know her.
I need to smoke.
Sitting on a splintery bench, skin to scalpel, I light the end of my cigarette and it hisses into life. I wonder, will someone ever light the end of my soul and bring it back to life?
Puff after puff
Pale blue tendrils drift lazily up and spell out
"A-V-I-E-L-L-E."
I look up and read aloud "M-A-R-Y-O-R-Y," and a knife is plunged into my womb.
Puff after puff
The smoke smells like stale breath--your stale breath forcing mine to escape from my nose as I try to escape from your arms.
"Avielle."
Heavy is the price for the abuse of that name, and you abused it until its skeleton turned to ash and I ground it into the earth.
"Avielle."
A child you abused. A spell to curse you. A face that was once mine. A weapon that will kill you slowly. A body that you ravaged. A name that you taught me to hate.
"Avielle." I am she.
I stub out my cigarette and you are gone.
