Sometimes, I guess there's just not enough rocks.

The girl in front of me in the line is laughing. Her head is tilted back and her red- ribbon mouth is open wide enough to eat the sun, swallow the clouds and everyone else in the line, me included. Her boyfriend is grinning at her, his left hand wrapped protectively around her chubby manicured one, his hip placed lightly against her in a stance screaming “she’s mine.”
The line is long. I count twenty two people in front of me and thirteen in back. At the side by the chain- link fence, a crying teenager stomps her feet and wipes the nervous sweat from her forehead as her friends plead with her and pat her back and matted black hair. This roller coaster seems to be the most intense one, with more spins and loops than the strand of DNA my brother has been studying for more than two months in his biology class. The girl in front keeps laughing, her boyfriend spins thin streams of her hair into blonde tubes, and my shoes are rubbing sharply into the sore spots on my ankles.
The sleepy man sitting at the booth in front of the line suddenly stands up, rubs his eyes, and fumbles with the rusty hook on the chained gate. The girl in front jumps up and down and wraps her arms round her boyfriend like a bear embracing a honeycomb. The ground vibrates as the corroded white wagons of the coaster slow to a snail pace in front of the sleepy man’s booth. The line wakes and trembles like an oversized caterpillar from a year long nap, and inches slowly towards the large wagon.

People seem to let themselves go on roller coasters. The most reserved person suddenly decides to lift his arms into the skirts of the clouds and whoop his lungs out until he loses his voice. You’re at one with the sky, with the wind that grabs at your hair and pulls your lips back and makes it feel like you’re swallowing your heart over and over and over again. I grab the rusty bars pushing into my chest and throw my head back to feel my hair bite my shoulders. My eyes are tearing and my lips feel like pebbles in the Sahara, smooth and pale, perpetually untouched by water. I can smell the anticipated anxiety of the people around me, watch from the corner of my eye as the blonde girl grabs her boyfriends arm and digs her face into his muscled shoulder. We climb slowly up, the pressure slapping bricks onto my ribcage until I feel ready to explode, and then plummet down, down, down, my stomach hanging onto my teeth for dear life and my throat vibrating with my scream as it rips out like a bullet from a gun.

Meet Zakura Berkova, my half Japanese half Bulgarian best friend of almost six years. A claustrophobic, she likes old silk curtains and collecting pictures of mothers that she glues in a scrapbook under her bed. She hates the color yellow and sleeps with her pillow over her head. She has races in the hallway with her dog and taught her parrot how to dance in less than a week using crackers and blue string. She loves to braid my hair.
We’re sitting at the farthest table in Burkley’s Soup Café and she’s telling me something.

Scratch that; signing. We’re deaf.

“Are you going then?” Her hands dance lighting speed in the air as she mouths her words. I glance sideways at her fingers and then the people passing. A women with short red hair flaying her hips in a tight black business skirt gives Zakura the Look, the “oh, the poor thing” expression before her face turns back to stone and she turns the corner. A man walking his dog appears from the opposite direction, a tall paper cup of coffee clenched in his free hand, the long blue veins in his arm outlined amid the scattering of gray hair on his skin. He doesn’t look at us.
Meet me, Nayemi Taylor. I like masks, purple hair, gliding my fingers over marbles and regret my nose ring. I like life stories and coffee at four in the morning and have never been kissed. I like watching rain racing down windows and never getting off busses until I land in the middle of nowhere. My cat’s name is Nnena and she likes sleeping under lamps and the color green.
Zakura punches my shoulder. “Ney, will you listen to me?” Her fingers are irritated as well. I focus my eyes to look at her. “Luka invited us to a party, I told him yes. You’re going too.” Her fingers are fascinating, like Medusa’s hair, with a life of their own. She wants a reply.
“Won’t we be strange?” My hands surprise me sometimes. I never think for them to move, they do it alone. “Or is this a party for deaf people?”
Zakura frowns. “We’re not freaks, Ney. Just because we can’t hear the music doesn’t mean we’re not hot like all the other girls.” She smiles when I roll my eyes and taps my nose with her spoon. “Try it out. People can be nice sometimes.” I shake my head but it’s so subtle I don’t think she notices. I barely notice. “Broden. I have to take care of him. Dad’s coming home late tonight.” Meet Broden, my baby brother. He’s normal and has freckles, wants a girlfriend but is scared of his own shadow. He likes collecting junk on beaches and hates it when girls in movies say love phrases before kissing.
“Broden is thirteen, Ney. He doesn’t need a babysitter.” It’s settled. I can’t say no. Whatever I say will be somehow solved or pushed aside by Zakura. My fate is sealed.
Zakura reads the submission on my face and smiles. “I’ll pick you up at six.”

I’m scared at home while I change. I’m scared in the car while we drive. I’m scared as we clomp in our heels to the vibrating black doors of the club. I’m in a denim black miniskirt and strapless black tank top with black roman heels. Zakura is in a tight purple dress stopping halfway down her thighs. Her heels are golden. She looks confident. Her eyes smile at me as she opens her mouth and her throat ripples with her scream. She opens the door, and we’re bathed in blinding white light, arms and smoke are pulling us inside, shutting the doors closed, and we’re in a psychedelic wonderland. The music is louder when you feel it. It controls my heart and makes it beat with the synchronized rhythm of the computer, my bones rattling with each vibration of sound. People are jumping, thrashing their heads and throwing their arms up in the air. Two girls dressed in barely visible bikinis slither like pale pythons round the DJ, gliding their hands down his chest, wrapping their legs around his. In the darker corners behind the bar, piles of stoned people giggle with each other and trace their fingers in the thick blue smoke above their heads. The balding barman is breaking up a fight between two drunken boys pointing fingers at each other. His mouth is twisted in a growling grimace as the muscles clench under his yellowed dress shirt. Zakura is gone. The glittering balls above my head twirl slowly and bring a cascade of flashing lights on the floor, making it move. Someone grabs onto my waist, another hand smoothes itself down my ass. I prance away as someone steps on my foot and an elbow knocks itself into my ribcage. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m a freak, a disabled weirdo. Everything about me doesn’t belong, but I feel my body molding itself into the vibrating rhythm of the music, synchronizing itself so I feel like this is how I’ve been moving my whole life, in a slow- motion wiggle with each limb moving away from the other.

A boy appears out of nowhere. He smiles down at me and says something and I smile and nod at him. We’re all deaf here; I might as well pretend. He takes my elbow in one hand and my waist in the other and gets behind me, rubbing his crotch against my back. I feel disgusted and then another feeling entirely overwhelms me, and I press back and follow his movements, my arms outstretched. The lights are flickering, black and white, black and white. Everything looks slow-motion, everyone’s breathing lasts a hundred minutes, the pounding of every heart throbs together slower than a snail. My shirt is slipping. I feel cold sweat trickling between my breasts, my neck, under my arms. I smell the drugs and booze and foreign sweat and it’s making me high and sleepy.

Before long, the boy swings around to face me and smiles at me again, and I smile back. He’s sweating too, his hair turning into long black spikes and his ruffled gray t-shirt sticking to his muscular body. He leads me to the bar by holding my elbow, and we sit next to each other on the high torn seats as the bartender mixes his concoctions under the long black table. A hand passes round a joint spewing blue and purple smoke but the boy shakes his head. When it comes to me, I grin and peel it from the offering fingers and press it to my mouth, dragging in so deep I see an explosion of red and purple dots in my eyes as my limbs turn to jelly. The boy holds my back firmly to keep me from falling and I laugh with my mouth open wide. When my eyes clear, I see he is laughing too.

The night drags on. The boy and I dance some more, and I find Zakura among the crowd, sticking to Luka like glue. Meet Luka, her on and off boyfriend. He likes it when girls wear red thongs and hates sex on beds. I hate him in every aspect except for the little fact that he’s okay with dating a deaf girl. The both of them are high, their eyes bloodshot and their throats convulsing with laughter. I bet I’m high too, but I’m too hyped to sit down and wonder about it.

At the end, Zakura finds me and wraps a thin elbow round my waist and giggles with me. Luka kisses her hand and disappears behind the bar. The heap of wasted teens peels away from each other and the blue smoke is cleared away, revealing a mass of red-eyed zombies. The vibrations from the music ebbs away and I feel vulnerable again. My body throbs. My clothing is cold with sweat.

I want to run away before the boy tries to find me, tries to get my number, or talk to me, before he realizes who I truly am. But we’re not fast enough. A strong hand takes my arm and spins me out of Zakura’s grip and I’m facing the boy again, a blush creeping up my neck as his black eyes smile at me. He tells me something, but it’s too fast for me to read his lips. Zakura’s smile is frozen, but she’s catching on. When the boy repeats what he said before, she steps up and tells him something, using her hands out of habit. I lost my hearing when I was nine, when Mom died, so I can speak a little. But Zakura is better at it, more confident. She asks the boy if he could speak slowly, so that we could read his lips. The smile slowly vanishes from his eyes and is replaced with first disbelief, then a kind of anger. He gives me a frozen look before shaking his head and walking away.

The car ride is not as excited as it is supposed to be. I lean my powdered cheek against the window and breathe deep as I stare at the lights of the city. Zakura’s eyes are glued to the road, all the drunkenness and drugs out of her system. Cars speed past us. I recognize some of the people from the party. When she drops me off at my house, her eyes say sorry but her hands are on the wheel. Before I can stop them, my hands prance in the air, spilling out their thoughts.

“He looked at me like I was a monster. Like he was touching a werewolf all night. He looked like he was going to get an exorcism as soon as he came home.” Zakura doesn’t reply, something I actually want her to do for once. My fingers fumble and her eyes look away. I open the door and leave without saying bye.

It’s almost three in the morning but Dad is still awake and sitting comfortably on his recliner, an old book firmly in his long, strong hands. Meet Dad. He likes sad songs in foreign languages and worshipped Mom like a faithful Catholic. He likes candles, noticing odd details in paintings, and staring at big words as he figures out their roots. He hates the rain and cemeteries.

Dad knows something is wrong but he knows me as well. He nods as I limp out of my shoes and up the stairs and collapse into a cold shower. I’m so angry and tired and stoned and angry that the water feels hot against my back, even though it must be freezing. I feel like standing under the stream forever, until I turn into the water itself and melt down the drain and live among all that water. Water doesn’t need sound. It just needs a place to go.

But then it gets really cold and I scramble out and wrap myself in a tower. I change into my night gown and stand in the middle of my room and think forever, think as the curtains by my window shimmer softly with the early morning breeze and think as the lights turn off downstairs, as the floor vibrates while my father slowly climbs up the staircase, taking each step at a time. I want to talk to Broden about what happened, read his lips as he tells me innocent solutions, laugh with him a he tells me make-believe stories about his day. But I stay in the middle of the room and remember the boy’s face when he realized what he had danced with, and what he almost fell in love with.

Zakura regrets forcing me to go, but I smile at her and tell her it’s okay, it wasn’t her fault. I envy her sometimes. I want someone to love me like Luka loves her, even if it is part- time. I always wanted it. One time, I snuck into the school bathrooms with her during lunch and flushed my bra down the toilet. My breasts aren’t small, and I walked around the school the rest of the day in my thin white uniform shirt, watching the boys stare at me. In my school, we don’t have special classes for deaf people. Zakura and I copy notes and watch the teacher and pass the tests, and no one knows anything about us until they try to talk to us. People don’t appreciate sound while they have it. They box each other’s ears when they’re angry and listen to music full volume on their players and in their cars. I feel the vibrations from half a mile away, louder than the music could ever be.

Zakura wants to meet but I say no. She frowns at me through the webcam and I give her a thumbs up. “Come on, “ she signs. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” I shake my head and smile at her. “It’s not that, Kura. I just want to be alone. I’m gonna go to the park again.” She wags a finger. “Be careful.” My hands reply something without my thinking and she logs off. I close my computer and leave a note for Broden and walk out the door.

The walk to the park is long, surrounded by gleaming store windows and buildings. Living in Manhattan always made things seem like sound is not important; it’s all in the eyes, all in the color, the people, the sights. But then when people ask me for the time, or for directions, or when they see me with Zakura or our other deaf friends, it shatters that whole image and makes Manhattan seem like every other place. You’re not one of us if you can’t hear the men playing their guitars for money on the dirty sides of the street, if you aren’t aware of the cars and the horses hooves on the sidewalk, and the people. I try to explain about the vibrations, but you have to be deaf to understand, and even then Zakura giggles at me and tells me that there’s no such thing, our bodies are only trying to make up for the lost sense, the vibrations are a thing of my mind. I remember when I met Luka the first time, when he shook my hand with a detached look on his face; “she’s hot, but.. deaf,” and when I met his other normal friends. There was a boy there, Matt, who seemed to like me despite knowing about me. He kept looking at me and watched my hands when I signed and laughed when I laughed. We all went to Luka’s place then, Luka and Zakura twisted together like tree roots on his cigarette-stained couch and all the other couples having their fun. I found Matt in the kitchen and he poured my glass with Vodka and we drank and laughed, and then I curled against his chest and closed my eyes at his warmth, his security. He stiffened then. His chest quivered as he spoke. I read his lips. “What are you doing?” It wasn’t a nice question, it had a statement behind it; “get off, I don’t like you.” I left early then, I learned to hate people.

The park is at the end of the block. There is no particular reason why I like it, but I find a certain peace in it. As I turn round the gate, I search for the farthest swing and sit on it, my ankles curled round each other, my hair in my face as I turn my head down. There’s a blind boy that comes here too. I see him around sometimes, gliding his hands over every surface as he searches for the swing set. He’s handsome, but unkempt sometimes. Some of the meaner boys of the block like to trip him or stick chewed gum or other gross things on the surfaces they know his hands will touch, but he never says anything to them, never fights back.

He sits on the swing right next to me, and tilts his ear to listen. I stop swinging, but he smiles. His words are slow, deliberate. “I know you’re here.” His lips are perfect, pale. “I can’t see you, but I can hear your breathing and your feet. I won’t bother you.” He starts to get up, but something in me wants him to stop. This is the perfect example of two people having no means of communication, but it never hurts to try.

“I’m deaf.” I bet my voice sounds strange, my words badly formed. My throat throbs as the words tumble out, hesitant at first and then unstoppable. He sits back down, still smiling. “I’m deaf but there’s nothing wrong with me.” I try to remember how to articulate the words, how easy it was for me to talk before I lost it all. “I can read your lips, I can feel you talking! I’M NORMAL!” the words rip my throat open and he flinches as I scream. From the corner of my eye, a flock of pigeons, spooked by my yell, take off into the sky. The boy tilts his head as he listens to their wings, their flight. “We both saw them.” I whisper. I wonder if he understands me. “Do you understand me?”

Nothing happens for two seconds, but they drag like two hours. Finally, he nods. “Yes.” He’s talking to me like a normal person. “Yes, I understand you perfectly.”

“Nayemi.” I whisper. It’s my thank you.

“Toru.”

There’s nothing else for me to say. I sigh. He tilts his head again.

“Tell me what you see.” I reach over and press my fingers lightly against his throat as he speaks. He repeats, the skin quivering. “Tell me what you see. Everything.”

With my fingers dancing at his throat, I look around and talk. Anyone passing by us would think we were just two normal friends, maybe a couple, siblings. Nothing is wrong with us, we’re good people, he’s listening to me and smiling at his hands, and I’m talking and talking, my words falling over each other like pebbles, but still ceaseless.

I can go on like this forever.

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

“Miss.”
She pulls at my sleeve with her baby hands. She is little, with blue December eyes and an old- lady frown. “Miss.”
“Yes?”
“Are angels real?”
I can’t answer. I wrap my arms around me and let the smell of the church envelope my face. I breathe in the dancing candles and the sorrow of the trembling figures shrouded in black. The priest’s soft fingers as they caress dusty pages, the dirty red carpet as the little girl stomps with her lively boot like a pony.
She is persistent.
“What do they look like?”
I shrug. The little boys standing by the doors in their cream silk robes emit a sudden wave of thin sound. Their shoulders shrug with mine as they breathe in simultaneously and let the song tumble out. I avoid her question, so I think.

A solis ortus cardine
Adusque terrae limitem
Christum canamus Principem,
Natum Maria Virgine.

Latin. They’re singing in Latin.
The little girl sighs and slumps down to the floor, leaning against a polished stone bench.
“Why do they make the carpets red?” Her hands curl like an eagle’s and I watch her silently. “I get blue, or green, but why red?”

Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine,
Parturit virgo mater,
Deum verum, genitum, non factum.

“She was my sister.” She gazes at the procession and I bite my lip.

“How come angels forget?” I twist my fingers nervously and hide my eyes behind my hair. Surely I must reprimand her. Tell her she is wrong, angels never forget. After all, she is so small. Only a baby.

But she's grown up now. Pain already stains her little face like a coffee splash on a puppy. And how can I tell her she is wrong, how can I contradict her, when the coffin is so, so small?

She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes.

The day it happened, I had no idea. Simple as that.
I woke at 7:03, and shaved for the first time in eleven days, put on my old jeans with the tear running through the left knee and the new shirt you bought for my birthday because you thought I had no reasonable ones.

Then Guinevere called and yelped out what happened in a tear- stained voice. You know what hurt the most? I didn't even know it happened. Isn’t that ridiculous? I think it is.

***

The air inside of the cafe is thick and warm and a drizzle powders the greasy window beside my seat. She is looking at me, glancing up once in a while from a newspaper stained grey with rain. Her hair is white, but not old white. It's long and glossy, trailing down at her shoulders and disappearing behind the plastic red of the table. Some of it is trapped between her fingers and licks at the water from the newspaper. Her eyes are covered behind a thin layer of bangs, but her lips, slightly parted and stained with cherry color; show a neat row of teeth like her hair.

She looks at me again and her eyes gleam a dark green.

I feel myself blush and turn away; watching two droplets race down the murky glass. They merge as one towards the end and speed to the finish line together. Rain is overrated. It's just water.

"Hey."

I start. My eyes dart everywhere, but the sound definitely came from her. "Huh?"

"Hey." She blinks. "I said hey. Like, greeting-wise. You know, aloha?" Her hands glide through the air to emphasize.

"Um. Hey."

She creeps to the edge of her seat and smiles, shaking the newspaper. "What's your name?"

"Jerome."

"Jerome. I'm Shalott. Don't laugh at the name."

"What's bad about the name?"

"It sounds like an old Southern woman screaming Charlotte when people read it aloud. They don't know you have to pronounce it Shyah- Lot." She says 'pronounce' weird. Prununce.

"Well, now I know, Shyah- Lot." She smiles at me. "What language is the newspaper in?"

"Oh." She twists the paper between her fingers. "Swedish. Oh, I don't understand it, don't get me wrong. I just like looking at the letters." I feel myself melt as she smiles again.

***

We were lying on your bed underneath the silky mosquito net, your hair draped over my arm and sparkling under the window. Your eyes were closed; lashes trembled. I shifted and blew into the caramel curlicue of your ear and you scrunched up your face like a rabbit and wrapped your hand around my chin. I laughed. You laughed too.

"Have you ever heard about the Lady of Shalott?" I played with the edge of your lilac shirt and shook my head. Lilac looks pretty with white.

"It's a sad story." You sighed. "My mother loved sad stories and old myths. My sister's name is Guinevere, like King Arthur's wife."

"You have a sister?"

"It is a poem, The Lady of Shalott. By Alfred Lord Tennyson." You sang out the name like a first grader memorizing the alphabet. You didn't say anymore and I closed my eyes, drifting to sleep.

"Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle embowers
The Lady of Shalott."

"It's beautiful." I glided my hands down your taut stomach.
"It's long." You wrapped your hair like a honeycomb around your fist and floated it above your face, your forehead furrowed. I don't know if you were talking about your hair or the story.

“There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott."

"I don't remember much else." You sounded sad. "I just know that she dies in the end."

"Everyone dies in the end, Lottie."

"She dies young. She leaves her tower and her curse is a slow death. Why would my mother name me after a woman that was doomed to die?"

"Why did she leave?"

"He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot. "
You smoothed your hand through my hair. "She fell in love."

***

We were so opposite each other that we became alike in our controversies. I didn't like movies with a lot of death in them, but you loved them. I would scold you with disgust as you watched a bloody battle; I called you cold- hearted and cruel and you bit back that I was a wimp and tolerating death was just another way of understanding it. It's true, now I know. I'm sorry for scolding you.

Whenever we would walk and you found a dead insect curled up on the floor you would yelp and delicately cup your palm and drop the dried body into it, then run to bury it. I crunched on dead cicadas when they came out and sang because fragile things scared me. When I was younger, I pulled apart the delicate wings of butterflies and cried when their colorful powder rubbed onto my palms and made my fingers a rainbow.

I told you all of the little things about me; the rib I broke when I showed my brother I could fly and jumped off the couch (you laughed at that one), the wrist I sprained the first and last time I tried to break-dance. I showed you the mysterious streak of blonde hidden underneath my dark brown hair and the skull tattoo on the small of my back that my father found, before he locked me out of the house for three and a half days. You told me that you liked words like "milk" and "slope" and "eradicate" and that you liked walking round the house in one sock and mini shorts and oversized shirts. You liked airbrushed tattoos because you liked variety, and you lit candles because they made you hope and your middle name was Sevya. You hated roses because they were cliché. You loved melted wax but you hated when it dried on the tips of your fingers because it made you feel trapped.

***
I'm dreaming. This is after she died. I am hiking through the woods with her and we silently choose a fallen tree and climb on top of it like we're horseback riding. Her hair is in braids and she is wearing a purple shirt with a sun on it, and red knee length shorts. I stare at the leaves and the muddy orange and ochre mixture.

"Why did you do it?" My voice breaks the stillness of the forest and I feel alone, so so alone. I look and she blinks her pretty green eyes at me, like a cat.

"Daw, honey, you know me." She smiles apologetically and raises her hands high in an animated shrug. "I'm... impulsive. You can't stop me... once I get started."

"But why couldn't you think it through, just a little? I mean, I... love you."

"I love you too, Jerry, I do. I'm sorry, really." She frowns. "But hey! You see me now."

"It's a dream."

"So? You can still see me. You know, you should go for someone else, now, I really won't be mad. If you won't, I'll keep poking your back at night and you'll hate me for it."

"This isn't funny, Lottie. You know I could never hate you."

"Well you will." She picks up a bunch of leaves in her hands and throws them in the air. "And you can get mad at me too, honey. I would. Now go. Oh, and tell Guenny hi."

I shake my head and reach for her, but she moves back and I fall into a pillow of leaves. She laughs, and everything turns black.

***

"Let's go catch fireflies." She pulled at my hand with her cool fingers and smiled at me. "Come on, Jerry, let's go catch fireflies."

"It's January!" I laughed at her eagerness and she slumped against me.

"So?"

I wrapped my fingers round a silky tube of silver hair. "You're so impulsive."

Her olive skin broke into a smooth rift of white pearls and thin pink ribbons. "That's me!" She sang. "Shalott the impulsive, Shalott the one- socked, Shaaaaaaaaalott- the firefly."

She made a song about everything.

"So how do you propose we catch fireflies?"

"Oh!" She took my hand and led me to her bedroom, with the wispy mosquito curtain dancing at her bed and the Urdu music softly streaming from a player in a shelf. Figurines of little creatures glittering under silver dust lay scattered among the shelves and books on mythology and abstract painters. Her hands, gloved in striped stockings, wrapped around four clear candle tubes and she plunked them onto the table. She grabbed two little ones from the highest shelf and one shaped like a lion from a rolling cabinet. She fumbled through her pockets, then mine, under her pillow, and finally under the mattress; where she took out a little green lighter. She took it, winked, pressed the button, and blinked as the flame flew out. A minute later, each candle stood gleaming.

"There." She spread out her arms like an invite to see a kingdom. "Behold. Fireflies."

I laughed and enveloped her waist with an arm and pulled her to the wall. The fireflies danced as we kissed.

***

There was an argument. Of course there was an argument.

We were sitting cross- legged on your bed, again. Your hands were cupped in your palms and a grim expression crossed your face like a cloud. I wanted to cheer you up, that's all.

"A smile is a curve that sets everything straight." I ran my thumb down your lips. "Smile."

You turned away. "My smile is a straight line." Defiant, like a child.

"Well, maybe I was asking you to smile normal." You looked up fast and I quickly regretted it. "Why do I always have to smile?" You unfolded your legs like a swan landing in water and leaped from the bed. "Why the hell do I always have to smile?" I stood up and approached you gingerly, like to a wounded wild animal. "I didn't mean any harm, Lottie, I-"

"Don't call me that! Everybody always calls me something other than my real name! My name is Shalott, Shyah- Lot!" You pronounced ‘everybody’ weird. Everybawdie.

I touched your elbow; you pulled away as if my fingers stung your flesh.

"You came home drunk last night." I accused. "You're having a hangover or something. Snap out of it."

"You're just jealous." You narrowed your eyes like an angry dog. "You think I'm fucking around with other guys, don't you? Here you are, sitting like a grandma eating Chinese food and reading; what is this, Of Mice and fucking Men, wondering, 'where oh where is Lottie'?" I was so angry.

“Who would fuck around with you anyway? With your... impulsive outbursts and weird ideas and fucking baby attitude."

You froze. Your voice turned to steel. "I warned you you would misunderstand me. I warned you I'd get tired of you and this would turn to shit." And you spun on your sock and ran to the bathroom, locking the door.

I wasn't angry anymore. I tiptoed to the bathroom and knocked lightly on the door. No sound came out of it. I knocked a little louder, but you didn't answer and I gave up. I crept to the armchair by the front door and took my coat and wrapped it around my arm. I craned my neck to the cream colored wall behind which the bathroom hid, but you didn't appear. I opened the door and walked out.

***

I called her and she answered. We were silent for a little while, but I knew she was there with her olive green phone, waiting.

"I'm sorry." I breathed.
"Me too." She sighed.
Silence.
"You didn't mean what you said, when you said all those things, did you?" I offered.
"No. No, honey I didn't."
Silence.
"Did you mean what you said about my impulsive outbursts and all?"
"No, baby. I was mad."
Silence.
"Do you think I'm pretty?"
"I think you're beautiful."
"You told me that beautiful scares you."
"Not your beautiful. Your beautiful makes me happy."
"I think I want to dye my hair again. White is starting to get boring, don't you think? Purple sounds good, doesn't it?"
"Yes, it does. Lilac is very pretty."

I heard her shift and my fingers tapped against the polished arm of my chair. I thought about the summer coming soon and soft rains and carnivals and warmth, I don't like carnivals because there are too many people and too much noise and color and light. But I like the sound of them.

"Maybe we could go to a carnival sometime." I offered because I knew it wouldn't happen anyway. Something in me just knew. "I could try winning you a toy and we could go on the Ferris wheel and kiss with cotton candy in our mouths and ride the big horses, and..."

"Sounds nice." Nice. She hated nice.

"I memorized some of the poem." I let my smile enter my words.
"But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights a-"

She laughed. I laughed too.

"Look, baby, I'm gonna go sleep. You were right, I shouldn't have been drinking; I'm really sorry. I love you. Call me tomorrow, will you? It would be... nice."

"Alright. I love you."

Click.

***

I park my car by the cemetery and sit still and stare. You never dyed your hair purple. Maybe you never wanted to, anyway. Maybe it was just a way to make me stop worrying.

Guinevere pulls up behind me and I open the door and get out. Her eyes are pink and she is alone.

The funeral is small. A few friends, a few crying aunts. The priest is distracted by something else, an upcoming wedding, probably. A baptism. We listen to the end of his prayer, he slaps his little book closed, we scatter the casket with moist soil.

As everybody leaves, I step behind Guenny and smooth her shoulders with my hands. She shudders a bit, but lets me. A after a while, she pats my hand gently and walks away. I step closer to the casket and crouch down.

"My impulsive Lottie." I smile. "My stupid, impulsive little Lottie." My fingers play with the soil and my smile fumbles as the wind picks at my hair.

"Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”

Man is born crying. When he has had enough, he dies.

"What's it like," she lightly traced her finger down the line of his jawbone, "to live in darkness?"

He shifted slowly and sighed into the tight curl of her ear, his body molding with hers like paint. He knew every line of her body, every slope, from the escalading smooth skin of her thin throat, the sand dunes of her caramel belly, the curved ivory of her hipbones and disc-shaped ilium, the warmth of her thighs, to the shyness of her tiny toes. He knew that by letting his fingers dance on the round bowls of her knees, he would make her giggle and pull her leg away like the graceful ballet of a frightened doe. He knew that he could perfectly bend his fingers over hers and that she arched her dancer's back with quiet pleasure when he pressed on the sore knots of her delicate spine and that her lips were ribbon shaped and her hair softer than the bubbling foam of the receding midnight ocean that hushed him to sleep in his childhood vacation home. She had told him before that it was dark blonde, because calling it dirty blonde made her scrunch her face together like the looming sunflowers that curled at his early home in his memories of color. He knew what sight was. He knew what color was and what the shape of a woman's face looked like, or the red paste of the sun that looked like a cracked egg set on a bowl of navy stars.

It had only been three months that they had known each other, yet he knew her far better by the mere feel of her skin or the sound of her voice. There were the bad things of course; the way she snarled at the people who cut across her in traffic, or the way she snapped her fingers when she was impatient or tapped her toes when she was angry. Whenever the morning train they took together screeched its warning signal as it slid to a stop, she would scream with it, and when he glided his hands down her contorted face, he felt the firmness of the flowery set of her jaw and grimace. She loved to curse. She loved to slam doors to make her point and listen to loud music with deep beats and irritating computerized rhythm. Her humour was crude, and she liked to be bitter.

But the good things always stepped behind like a faithful shadow. Her voice was like the crystal ring of wind chimes when she sang her mother's lullaby in the soft curls of Polish, or when she cried out softly as they made love. Her hands, when she glided them down the firm set of his back, were tender, her lips when she smoothed them over his neck like the tender sighs of bobbing poppies. She held his hand in the movies and screamed even when she wasn't afraid, to show him, she told him, that she was always beside him. She chased pigeons like a little girl and cried when she heard about sick animals or babies and cradled him in her hands like he was her own. Most of all, she loved. He didn't need sight to see that.

"It's colorful." He sighed and she giggled as if she understood and pressed her body closer to his, and held his hand and he bent around her like the ladle of a moon-shaped soup spoon and breathed in the strawberry smell of her sleepy love.