Shein Shine like Fourteen Karat Gold
- uglyx3
- 6 days ago
- 21 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
‘This is my Sunday best’, she barked for no one to hear.
Swallowed by the drum of the rain. Windows, tar, car bonnets, crash symbols.
‘This is my Sunday best.’
Each repetition chopped and screwed by the rain water pooling onto her upper lip, like an IV drip. Her bangs, now stuck to her forehead, supply the nutrients. Cerulean blue OKNOTOK tee with the saffron text, paired with plum corduroy capris and vintage Esprit trainers that mimicked the sentiment of a dorky Prada Sneaker.
Accessorised by her midriff and pubic hairs that spilt over due to her lack of underwear and pants that hung heavier off her frame. Her socks, now damp from the ball of her foot to the tip of her toes. Running felt desperate, so Alicia settled for skipping. Riding the seam of her pants like a rocking horse, hiking them up to shield from unwanted flashes. The rain was a hot flash.
It rains differently here. Never lasting longer than a radio hit. It rains like it has something to say; Almighty and then, as if catching itself in a naked moment of reflection, recoiling into its shell.
The clouds hold the messages.
Alicia stumbled in, shirt clinging to her soft stomach. Her speckled skin brought to life against the canvas of her flushed cherub cheeks.
‘You couldn’t have worn something sweeter, honey?’ she snickered as she shovelled yellowed claws into Alicia's shoulder blade. Coral-Lipped and Leather-Chested Yvette, the only time she’d put a cigarette down was to light another. Yvette was the second casting agent Alicia had worked with since starting out. First was Kubus, a boer with tufts of grey in his goatee. He was what she described as a hat person. She envied that; hats on Alicia felt like lipstick on a pig. She had only seen him once without his soiled Blue Bulls cap. His hairline, further fractured by his H&M x Marvel beanie in the city's raspier months, its surface freckled with pilled fabric and dandruff. He’d prefer to be remembered that way.
Kubus scored Alicia a couple of gigs early on. An extra in an AFDA student film, a multipart Mr Delivery campaign and a sinus drip commercial; that when spotted unearthed the skeleton that was her uncle, from his sarcophagus shaped by their heirloom of habit. Seeing his niece's face made gravity soften like playdough. Time bent backward, dripping like the syrup in his double cup.
Alicia found acting to be grossly cannibalistic. She winced every time she was confronted with herself. Like an aunty commenting on how big she had gotten; whilst pinching at her womanly body. Wisemen came knocking in the dead of night, assuring her that her tongue piercing and woe-is-me attitude were handled with care.
No longer was she suited for teen roles. A welcomed change; until she realised most, if not all, amateur writers had some coming-of-age story stuffed somewhere in their Google Drive. You know, because growing up is gruelling, and we don’t have nearly enough stories written about the wrongs we wish we could ‘(re)right’.
Straight-jacketed in a drug-laced slumber, watch your wit sprout legs that run circles around your competition. A reality in which your convictions were a buffed-up gym rat. A fairytopia where your presence was inoffensive.
They were meeting at a gourmet burger joint, so yes, the fries did not come with the meal. The air conditioner spat on the back of her neck, the same force as being dunked, before someone assigned your shoulders as their seat. Her nipples stood on their ends. No one paid her, or them, any mind; that is until she sneezed. Then all eyes were on her because she screeched like a banshee as she collapsed into a Chinese squat. Emergency brace position. Her script and production documents were stale bread brought to life by her damp hands that softened them.
‘She’s porky, don’t you think? And the bangs..’
The producer whispered to his director loud enough for even the table next to them to hear.
‘Coke is fine, no ice, thank you.’
The waiter nervously fluttered the shutters of his aperture. His eyes then focused as if to say: Hey sweetie, don’t listen to them; I’d fuck you any day. Jolt you by the handles of your fruit-bearing hips, against the clouded mirror of this establishment's rustic washroom. I’d clear you of all your congestion. It’s the least I can do for a pretty girl like you.
Alicia shook her head to clear the cobwebs of commiseration, her gaze now on the polished laminate flooring and her shoes that were crumbling with her. Subsumed in a flush of embarrassment, she pocketed the pieces she could reach and kicked the ones she couldn’t under her seat. Alicia lived too laissez-faire of a lifestyle to be this committed to wearing vintage clothing. She hardly remembered her cobbler's hands and washed all her clothes in one cold cauldron. A wolf in sheep’s clothing; perpetually haunted by Earl’s words when a new 'club standard' rolled off sweatshop belts and onto the backs of her flock. Stitched into existence; synthetic and disposable like the nights they were worn for. She was left with no choice but to conform.
Yvette's lizard tongue slurped tomato sauce off her duck acrylics and signed on the dotted line. She always had somewhere to be. Nudging her saucer of fries to Alicia while cartoonishly winking at the table was her version of a curtain call: the_final_nail_in_the_coffin.pdf.
Cowgirl Alicia held her piss till the final amen, she needed to assess the damages before she made her claims. While mismatched mirrors hung askew, below the little metal tongues, curled out to carry shame and Chanel. Alicia’s crumbling shoes were tucked out of sight, their dry rot a quiet disgrace in the otherwise homely disarray of the gourmet burger joints rustic washroom.
Her phone seared the soft white underbelly of her palm, generating enough heat for her to mistake the waft of charred shallots, for her skin that was brined and scalding. The girls were revolting against the harrowing holiday schedule triggered by the tacky He Has Risen flyer they were obliged to share on their official accounts. Alicia knew better than to play with fire; her hangover had begun corrupting her body and mind.
Are you fucking with me?
His sudden pushback caused her Coke to push back the tequila from earlier that morning, up her throat and through her nose. In their plus minus three years she had been with Tshephang, he had never been that blunt with her. They had called it quits many times before. After which he’d show up to her apartment with some sort of stew or soup, no matter the weather, and a new nomination bracelet charm. Her freezer was overrun by his mother’s Tupperware containers. She never made it hard for him to see her.
It’s God ordained to see a ghost on one of your worst days out.
Monet Muller was made in the likeness of Casper McFadden, or better yet the prophet Solomon: open and hopeful. Their kindness mistaken for naivety, faith for madness. And what followed was not a fall from grace, but a slow descent into something darker. Monet was not the type of mixed to put flags in her bio, but she did have this long standing joke about being a German shepherd that long lost its charm. It might have been missing the set up or something. Her daddy, Maximilian Muller, was a jazz drummer and activist. Her mum, a teacher.
Hillbrow 1977, the moon was parched and pulsing. Max stood propped against the red fire truck of Bella Napoli’s interior, his bruised gold liquid clinging to the ribs of its cut crystal. He watched as politicians groped journalists they held in moderate esteem; pawns in a libidinal economy where intimacy stood in for influence, and power stayed firmly out of reach. The mirrored ceiling refracted the kaleidoscope of his heavy heart, projecting shadows of guilt and alienation for all to bear. The white man's burden. He always felt like the black sheep in places like these.
Gcina's presence was a welcomed shock to the senses, cutting through the haze of smoke and mirrors. The disco ball danced across her crushed velvet dress, casting a halo around her like a polished gem. Amongst the crowd of lacquered hair and off-the-rack Donna Karen suits, she moved like a secret the night was trying to keep. Drawn in by the green beaming from her neck cuff, Max couldn’t look away, it was like slipping into a trance. When her gaze met his across the room, the weight of the night lifted from his chest, even if, only momentarily. She was an escape, a beacon of something solid in a world that felt too hard and too fast.
‘Take my hand and lead me,’ he said as she guided him out and into the polluted city air: steamy and sticky.
A taxi ride to Eloff Street was the unspoken plan. While she and her coven laughed loud and unburdened, their joy, a language he barely understood. Max sank into the vinyl seat, aware of his limbs, his whiteness, his place; an invited witness to a world that moved without needing him.
‘I’ll love you till I’m old and you’re grey,’ she said as their relationship grew soft and slow.
With time she traded sequin for structure, nights spent in dance halls for mornings spent polishing Muller's dress shoes. Her loudest earrings, too bright for the life she’d been conscripted into, were wrapped and tucked into the trunk. An inheritance for the child Max was willing into existence. The rhythm of her life had changed. No longer syncopated and spontaneous, less jazz, more metronome, like a hymn sung to herself alone. But still, they marched.
Gcina front and center, Max a few paces behind. His voice rang louder than hers, even when they spoke the same truth. Strangers broke chants to beg him for his autograph, they called him comrade, boet, legend. Muller moved like a preacher at a revival, piped-piping the crowd with stories of Ibrahim and Masekela, as if the spirits of those cats' lives lived on his breath, while Gcina was left to wear her resentment like a second skin. Tight in some places, stretched in others, always threatening to split.
She often thought of her half-brother, Hal. The brilliant, unshakable Hal. The Professor, born to a different mother, a white one. His sharp intellect stood no chance against the murmurs about his bloodline, about where he did and didn’t belong. He moved through the world like a question mark in places that valued exclamation points. Gcina feared the same fate for their child, and what it might say about her. About the life she chose, the parts of herself she might have given away.
The Mullers drifted in and out of one another's orbit, through funerals, humiliation rituals, christenings, and public lynching's. The jet lag only settled in Gina's joints when Monet’s bedtime would roll around. The only story she’d swallow was theirs, their story. Bra Max simplified their past into a single anecdote, polished like an old coin.
‘We met the old-fashioned way, on the street. Kippie Moeketsi was playing,’
before slipping into his monologue about how times had changed. The last Alicia had seen Monet, she lay, hair mopping and knees kissing the vinyl floor in a froggie stretch. Much younger then, they shared the same ballet class and were often paired together because of our height and shape.
Ladies! Apples with Bananas, Strawberries and Pears!
Monet wore this maroon choker to their class once, and it was love at first sight. Monet roped Alicia into what she called the sacrament of silk and silver. Simply put: stealing from the antique jewellery and clothing store neighbouring the studio. Alicia joined her holy service once and haunted the pews like a sloth, in hopes of being caught. But the shop owner was a sundress-wearing housewife who needn’t worry about rent, just something to do. Monet sold her loot on Yaga for a fraction of what it was worth. Used her earnings to clear her Shein cart for that month.
‘We’ve been praying for you,’ Max hissed.
His voice, cushioned by the tearing and shuffling of cardboard and plastic. It startled him to realise he had raised capitalism’s handmaiden.
‘Pastor Norman would love to see you at Sunday's service.’
Max handed her off to the man in his Sunday best: Panda dunks, Galaxy Boy logo tee and checkered trousers rolled up once to reveal the understated allure of hairy ankles. That’s what the church hired him and the last six for, that and sermons cut from the same cloth as slam poetry. Norman's bravado was enough to tempt her, just as it was enough to distract from his swing in his step he could never quite pray away.
Youth pastors had notoriously high turnover rates. Their hands touched the lives of many; but somewhere between remaining young and hip, and grooming cheap labour to spread the gospel, accusations would fly like pigs in the sky. The offering basket stomached the congregation's confessions when it came time to break bread. Norman tugged at Monet’s nape, commanding her to the prayer room with the mission to plead the greed away. She trusted the calm certainty of her shepherd's touch. His guiding hold was firm like wire, and as gentle as wool.
‘Coax the compulsion out of her and replace it with a greater purpose.’
The umbrella she clung to buckled and collapsed under the weight of the storm. Monet was caught in the rapture between girlhood and something else unnamed. The world asked her to choose, but her body answered first—quietly, rhythmically. A low hum beneath the surface. Not quite desire, nor design. Just the aching urge to orbit smaller, softer lives. To hush, to hold, to mold. Pastor Norman heard what she had to say, caressing her knee each time she began with, ‘I feel like…’
She’d grown accustomed to the stares of men with bulky bodies and hollow eyes, the ones who sized her up like prey. So when he asked her to join the mission, it didn’t feel like a decision. It felt like salvation. He called it a calling. Told her she had the gift. Bring a friend. Save a soul. Buy one, get one redeemed. The church loved a girl like Monet; young, articulate and brimming with conviction. The best marketers are always young. Their voices are clear, their faith contagious, like referral codes with legs.
Alicia quit ballet soon after that transgression, not because of it but in spite of it. She quit because she had no real desire to dance, more specifically to dance on pointe. Alicia never really cared for feet, but she did care for beauty. And ugly feet felt like a life’s sentence she would never beat. There were still so many heels, boots, clogs and thongs that she still wanted to live in. A few mouths, for the right amount. She would do funny things for money (love). Before Teezo was the moderately loved Afrotech DJ you all know him as today, he was a clown.
He discovered a love for comedy, which Alicia supported the same way she did any man who played her their demos, whilst she lay soft and bare in their arms.
‘He's no Trevor Noah!’ his mother heckled.
Alicia loved her a lot, Mam’ Thembu. A pseudo mum who over wine, indulged her whines over the bridges she had burnt. She always offered to do her laundry (the right way), and warned her off smoking after seeing all the holes she’d bore.
Tshephang’s comedy club held a fundraiser to get their show to the Grahamstown Arts Festival fringe circuit. Naturally, he enlisted Alicia to help on the day by painting kids' faces. But when the time came for her commitment, she’d gotten ghostly high off of an edible. She took the batter, bravely, working at a snail's pace to complete one face. Tshephang stood at the other side of the community hall, stealing glances at her rump as his group performed their set. Alicia loved his eyes on her back, her front, and crown. F21, still on the fence about M32. Tshephang hated when she stunk of skunk, and she hated when he blew her high by starting a fight. She chose to be a lady about it, you know, compromise.
The very same compromise is why she found herself greened out, sweaty and blue in the cold arms of the bathroom sink. Alicia stretched her thermal to mop her liquid shame from her lips, to her chin, anchoring herself to the clean line of her clavicle. The rest of that afternoon consisted of not so small talk with the other Jester’s Companions. They spoke about their funny valentines with a tenderness that bordered on pity. Compared to when she was exclusively a WAG, she felt at home here. Every giggle she let out felt earnest. The seasoned Wives of Fools probed her about her relationship; where they met, how old she was, when she planned on giving him a family, you know the basics, but Alicia couldn't bring herself to divulge those details in the presence of all the pint-sized leprechauns.
Instead, she told them about how he got her clean. How she grew plump and full of loving; once sober. Californian sober, is still sober, she clarified. Teezo’s fortune turned with the clouds and he began booking regular gigs. After convincing himself she held his future captured in her womb, he’d vigorously rubbed her belly like a lamp. Recited jokes he’d scribbled on slips, reading them low like psalms, while she lay soft and bare in his arms. The magician’s assistant came to her defense in the flash of a cloak. Playing devil’s advocate as she made her case. Alicia left the place with eight new followers, a purse full of clown school brochures, and an ear clogged with testimonials. She never said no.
The concrete was still damp and warm. Alicia’s stout snuck whiffs of the scent as she braced herself for the gentle scrutiny that came with walking with her feet kissing the concrete. An awareness that smothered her chest, like the lingering sting of menthol on the skin, burning and cool all at once. An awareness that settled in her bones as she flashed a vacant smile at brothers in her same position, weighed down by seething eyes that painted them into invisibility. Only visible as scapegoats, labels they could never outrun.
‘You always liked your shit worn out,’ Mo teased.
Al let out a stiff laugh, handing one of the bags to Mo, they fell into rhythm without realising,
‘How long have you been back?’
‘Just sorting out my visa,’ Mo said, fumbling with her keys, ‘then I head back to Mongolia.’
‘You think Mongolians need your God?’
Alicia’s words revved Monet into a vertigo spin; like a VW Golf Chico carving rings into the city streets. Her pulpy beet juice launched like a grenade. Its stain bloomed a slow bruise across the pale fabric of her deel – a traditional tunic she’d brought back from Ulaanbaatar. Alicia cocked her head, the corners of her mouth tightening.
‘I’m sorry for what I said, how it came out. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I just thought, I thought you’d benefit from the sense of family I’ve found there.’
YOu always bin this crosseyed?
@pharmacy...NEED STILPANE
yo sinus ad staring me down crazy
they give you medical aid @JackRose?
Yo uncle mc u bby
‘How's Norman and the kids?’
A lash intended to conceal the dark circles that stood as a trophy for time passed waiting in vain. For an apology, so far past its sell-by date, it had lost all value.
‘Are you going to scold me or get in the fucken car?’
Alicia said nothing. The silence between them sat like a slammed door. Monet’s beetle felt like a terrarium; moist and overgrown, glowing orange the same way the West saw the Rest. A boy formed part of the display, his car seat a plinth for honeyed coils, Hurley swim trunks, and an Apple Watch with custom encrusted boogers on it. His eyes danced across Alicia’s chest, eyes, and lips. She curled them before miming hello.
‘He doesn’t speak, at least since I’ve known him.’
‘His name?’
‘Knox’
‘How long have you known him?’
‘Like a month’
They entered a neighbourhood in the North that Alicia was unfamiliar with. The houses had enough space to
breathe, but God does not live here. He could be found somewhere along the N6.
‘Coastal Living: He Cherished His Little Life’
an exclusive interview from the Guy Upstairs.
Alicia stood still, looking out, disrobed by the light until she became transparent. Like a chameleon, clinging onto the sensation of becoming and changing. She toyed with madness. Madness as Passion, Madness as Savagery, Madness as Error, Madness as Blindness, Madness as Sexuality. Alicia wistfully dragged her fingers on their spines, swatting her judgments like flies, before approaching a framed image lay belly up on the shelf. She read the plaque, a scarification rising like braille beneath her touch, Fellowship in Decolonial Gender Praxis, 2001.
The photo showed a sheepish cup of rooibos, his solemn gaze framed by the ditzy airiness of the woman beside him, grinning with the lightheartedness of Miss Piggy during matinee. Around the frame, carefully arranged in ritual, sat a mess of toys. A plastic fire truck with chipped paint, a wand with a missing star tip, and a single Mrs. Potato Head figurine, surrounded by her troop of spuds, each marked with bruised skins and bite marks.
‘My uncle's wife died last October,’
Monet inserted without warning sweeping through the stillness like a broom through cobwebs.
‘He started sleeping in the living room to reinforce their separation. All her stuff has collected dust in his bedroom. It's sad, isn't it?’ A pregnant pause followed.
‘Do you mind helping me box the rest of this shit?’
The Boy Who Swallowed the Sun!
Exclaimed the beautiful, I mean handsome young lady as she knelt before the boy, raising a triangle-cut toasted cheese to the sky like a sacrificial offering. A whisper of red Supreme boxer briefs peaked above her waistband, catching both Alicia and Monet’s attention. The cub scaled the ladder of her firm core to claim his prize, knocking the tripod on the counter in his haste. Her name, Doris, was embroidered in navy thread across her slacks.
‘Knox hasn't had a single green since we lost Momma Bear,' the handsome lady relayed.
Doris is our type, Alicia thought to herself, I bet Mo doesn’t even know that those are pink Bottega Puddle Boots, an odd note she bookmarked. It teleported her to a time when she walked with a clipboard tallying who men looked at the most. As if Monet had read the thought from across the room, she shot back.
‘Why don't you get a head start and look for some replacement shoes? The clothes and shit are near the ridiculous Brett Murray sculpture in the corner.’
Monet dragged Doris by the collar, she had an hour of service left to complete in the doghouse. Left alone with the kid Alicia began to sift through the boxes. A breeze brushed the bare strip between hem and heel giving her an excuse to slip on the floor-length Chloé cardigan whose owner's blond hairs, woven through the knit, preserved her memory. She moved through the shoes, parading her options to the boy, voicing each brand with the slow, honeyed cadence of children's programming. Syllables stretched like bright blocks for him to stack.
Ahh… it’s Bootsy, baby
A memory from the night before dropped like a download. A baile flip of I’d Rather Be With You thumping through the speakers. Alicia fought the spirit that lived inside her, careful not to offend Teezo by shuffling to his openers set. Alicia dreamt of wrapping herself in the porcelain lady’s skin as she flipped through the CD sleeve, scanning the credits like a pop quiz. With the boy on her hip, Alicia googled how to operate Bang & Olufsen Beosound 9000 MK3. Cueing the disc from the top to set the scene for Doris and Monet, who ravenously humped in heat on the balcony. Tangled in vines, they giggled like schoolgirls.
A moustached stranger stumbled to the door, drunk. His body swerved like a car out of control, forcing him to channel a judge while parking his sandals besides sneakers that hadn't passed clearance. Hal's limbs betrayed him, launching one shoe across the foyer, like a stone skipping across a pond. Hal’s candied eyes glistened, he hadn't heard music in the house since the Spring.
Knox clung to Alicia’s shoulder like a monkey. His small hands gathered the strands of hair that had drifted like fallen leaves, grooming her as if she were his doll. He slurped her angel hair pasta, twisting the strings around his fingers with innocent delight. She reeled the strands from his mouth without a hint of judgment.
I pronounce you Lady and Tramp.
‘Why are you exposing him to this?’ Hal mumbled.
‘Carnal desires shouldn’t be looked at as sin or abhorrent. It's a celebration of our primal natures. The kid isn't deaf or dumb.’
Swept up in a tornado of red rage and confusion, Hal heaved onto his cotton shirt. Alicia covered the boy’s eyes with the silk scarf she’d planned on pocketing as a souvenir of time spent in the house. She spun Knox in nine soft circles to match his age.
‘Count to one hundred,’ she whispered, ‘and wait for daddy.’
Alicia shut the door behind her, locking the boy out from heaven.
‘Let me guess, you only fuck black men?’
‘How long has it been since your wife's passing?’ she asked, voice dipped in mockery, ‘I fuck who I want.’
‘Tokens to make mom and dad frown.’
Alicia scrubbed at the vomit on his shirt, hard enough to burn. His chest hairs crackled like the first pop of coals.
‘There is no mom and dad.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘The old fashioned way, at the club.’
They walked a tightrope between darkness and light. One wrong step and her crotch would catch alight, like crops in drought. Alicia peered through the veil that separated the patrons and their hired company, only to catch sight of Doris and Monet in a different kind of heat.
‘To be romantic is to be measured with the truth, frugal with words that would batter and bruise.’
‘So lie?’
‘Yes, lie because you love her. I will lie to you in return. No one has to get hurt. Let your guard down. Unbuckle over me.’
Alicia reached over and under the waistband of Hal’s peach Pleats Please harem pants. Thrusting himself out of her hook, his back now against the door, facing her. She took the gift that was her touch and returned it to the sender. As she got comfortable, draping herself over the couch like a figure posed for a painting, the bald-headed professor fastened his eyes, imagining Alicia's moans as that of his wife. They sang in ecstasy, loop after loop, lasting longer than a radio hit. It’s what Bootsy would've wanted. His liquid shame marked his trousers with a statement loud enough to silence its folds.
Knox patiently awaited the conclusion of his family's respective processions. He dressed the table with Easter eggs, placing one to the right side of every plate.
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Alicia asked as she passed Knox his Fanta.
‘In charge’, the boy responded, ‘of course you do,’ Doris cheered.
Knox pressed Alicia’s collarbone as if it were an emergency button. She took a beat to think, skipping through all her options like hopscotch on hot cement. Her hand wrapped his in a tight grip, like a stern warning.
‘Why don't we ask your Aunty Monet or Au.. Doris?’ Her tone turned defensive as she handed the golden boy back his play thing.
‘I never dreamed you'd leave in summer.’
Doris’ words dropped like a needle scratch across vinyl. The moment then hardened like buttered popcorn; coating their mouths in lard like plaque. Monet didn’t flinch. She toyed with the greens on her plate; knowing, as always, that it would never work in the long run. Alicia took it upon herself to steer the cart back on its track.
‘I want to be an immovable force,’ she announced, causing Hal to fold into laughter.
The boy wonder embraced Alicia; their temples meeting like tuning forks, as he nested in her lap.
Whiskey tongue.
Daddy say funny things.
Eyes swish. Salamander.
An apology versed in symbols only Alicia could decode.
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ She hurled at the funny guy like a crackle of thunder.
The question hovered unanswered, her voice already halfway gone from the room. Alicia stormed off, smoke trailing behind her like a cartoon cloud. Moments later, she returned, cheeks blushed with rouge. She had forgotten her cigarettes on the windowsill. Monet followed her into the foyer without a word. They sparked the emergency joint Alicia kept in the carton beneath the old chandelier, its crystals conducting the chorus of saints. Then the phone rang, Tshephang, his mum made minestrone.
‘I didn't mean to laugh. I want more for you than time spent chasing a clock. You could work here, in this house. You and Doris. Help mind our boy. He likes you a lot’.
‘The white man's burden is not your cross to carry.’ she imparted as she savoured Monet’s embrace.
Alicia wondered if AI could predict the woman she'd resemble when her path merged with her friendly ghost again. She never thought she’d be this happy to see Tshepang pull up in her three-door. She caught her reflection smiling back at her in the windshield, just above where his hairline receded like a tide pulling back from the shore. Her fingers swept through the bangs she’d drunkenly butchered in his tub that morning, itsy bitsy spidering down her face. Greeting her with the pungent scent of earth, wind and fire, aromas Teezo knew all too well.
‘It’s not over ’til the fat lady sings,’ she muttered, bracing herself as she swallowed a mouthful of pride. Teezo opened the door for her in a buttery motion and the tension between them evaporated. They’d agreed: it was a pie in the sky. He unboxed a new charm for her bracelet. A red heel with Break a Leg, draped like a sash in Curlz MT.ttf.
I dreamt about the night we met, how you stood towering over me, your bosom, my shelter. I dreamt about your hand, clawing and blossoming inside of me, nagging me to the cliff’s edge. I dreamt about how you made me quiver in JR’s thin-walled stall. How you came alive with the superpowers I had given you. You sank your full weight into my bones, and I drew shallow breaths beneath you. I dreamt about my buddies on the other side of the door, entertaining women who’d trade them in for a bottle of bubbles. I could never lead a horse to water, but with you by my side every wish I had; granted. When your legs parted, so did the seas. You waltzed with angels and I called you God.
Older men have a tendency to sound like this. It's all sugared taints and corny haiku’s peppered with unrelated emojis. What he meant was that he and all his comrades screwed young girls with the intention of forgetting everything they could have been. Accepting what was, made them good lovers. When the clock struck 12, they fell to their knees, giving thanks to the potion that was a virgins blood. A god worth worshipping does not demand praise.
Sweet corn
Mac and cheese
Lemon creams
Potato salad
Pancakes
Potato: all forms
Egg and mayo sandwich
Coleslaw
The golden boy pressed his cheek against hers, opening his mouth and imitating her chewing movements. Turning to her like a baby bird, cocking his head back for a scoop of her kiwi fruit.
‘His halo hangs over me like a shimmering noose.’
I've spent so much in this house, I've shed in every room.
I've been here long enough to have swept it all up.
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