THE SCARLET THING

i woke into a room made of glass. the light was already there, waiting for me like a punishment. it

pressed its weight into the space behind my eyes, where time has always lived, soft and furious. my

temples pulsed. two points of fracture. two fragile hinges where memory swings open and does not

close.

there is a photograph taped to the mirror. i do not touch it. the girl inside is curling at the edges,

her smile sinking in. her eyes are too loud. i don’t remember placing it there but i know exactly

why i haven’t taken it down. she is the last thing i haven’t buried.

dust has settled on the frame like a second skin. dust like breath held too long. dust like the

aftermath of an elegy no one read out loud. it gathers without asking, the way grief does, in the

hollows. in corners. it knows how to wait. it knows how to keep you still.

i breathe around it.

i move carefully, as if not to wake the silence.

the light drags across the room. it’s sterile and white and godlike. it flattens me. it wants me

obedient. i think of tulips in a hospital room, blooming red like blood you can’t take back. how

they stared at her. how they accused her of wanting peace.

i, too, want peace.

but not the kind they offer in clean sheets and noise.

i want the peace that comes without color.

the kind that doesn’t follow you down the hall.

time lacerates tenderness. it scrapes it out of you. it enters through the temples and takes what it

wants. i feel it pulling at me now, thread by thread, until even my thoughts feel borrowed. until

even my name feels like it belonged to someone kinder.

there is a letter i will not send. it says:

to the version of me that didn’t survive.

i’m sorry i wear your face like a mask.

i’m sorry i walk around in the body you tried to keep soft.

i fold it again. again. again. until it’s nothing but a line in my mouth.

until it disappears under the tongue like a prayer never meant to be answered.

there is a single red object on the desk.

not a tulip.

a hairclip. plastic. childish.

but it feels like an intrusion.

it does not belong here among the dust.

it reminds me of her.

how she used to part her hair like a curtain.

how she said her head felt too full all the time, as if the past was dripping down the back of her

neck.

o my strange sister

o my funny duchess

o little ghost who made everything holy

this is your room too now.

sit beside me in the hush.

let us watch the dust settle like snowfall.

let us refuse to move.

the photograph watches.

the dust gathers.

the scarlet thing glows.

time tries again.

i close my eyes and feel it in the temples —

not pain, but the memory of pain.

not death, but the desire for silence.

not an ending, but the beginning of forgetting.

and still —

i cannot throw the photograph away.

i cannot let the dust have everything.

i cannot return the red object to its drawer.

i am not ready to be rid of the pain.

i am not ready to say your name as if it isn’t mine too.

so take my hand.

and let us be ghosts together —

two pulses behind the glass.

two girls who refused the tulips.

two shadows in the white room.

still.

unmoving.

holy.

Written by W. L.

written in the aftermath of memory, this piece traces what remains when tenderness decays: a photograph, a red thing, the dust.