You’re Invited!

My Suzanne,

We’ve missed you. Last time you were present you poured a chamomile, room-temperature, between us. I’d like to think you intentionally dispensed it as such to kill change before it can wake. The quiet can kill death itself. I know it’s truly because ye Ma would erupt in strife to see yer mittens caressing the birdcage. It shook and warbled as if her own crinkly mother. Only at this early hour did I ever question your mother’s heart, I thought she ought to let you set the feathers free. Rip open the shrieking pillow and keep its spilt innards from heaven. They both shrieked as if to teach each other something, and learning, you shrieked back. Your own fucked up little family choir.

The table is set to your predilection. The handle of Clodagh’s knife is snapped like a bone before her. She will be there strung with the yellow ribbon she keeps around her neck, wedded to a prayer. Its bunny-eared limbs hang tired from her nape, levers free for any curious poppet who may wonder what they do.

The inky remains of a squashed ant still stain Fiadh’s upper left thigh, a child lost beneath the parachute of white cotton hem. The victim long outlives its six-legged mother, just like Fiadh did. Matching ribbons droop on either side of a bulbous cavern.

Maeve and I don’t look at each other anymore, rather just stare, tethered by the powdered pearls sleeping inside a floating head. To Clodagh, maybe, her and I are two doorknobs facing one another from across the domestic river, perpetual coworkers. Diaphanous minnows drift between us in silence, time has blinded them to the tension. I miss when your pudgy right hand rested on the back of my head and your left on Maeve’s, bullets waiting for permission to enter, pushing us together in their impatience. Your warmth substituted her lack thereof. The two charming strangers were granted entry before sinking their fangs in from behind and, puncturing our soft palettes, into the front of our mouths. I acknowledge the milky mirrors painted beneath cupid’s bow but I swore I felt teeth one time. Real teeth, the less-white kind, like the thick retired soldiers you run your hands over to make birdsong. I wonder if that’s what your Ma’s teeth melted into when the fairy forgot them. I always kept watch for that fairy; maybe your mouth was so warm with golden sun that they blinded her. Bring your own lazy singing soldiers home with you when you return, won’t you? That way we can share the souvenirs ‘round!

There will be a cake with stiffened cream peaks and a silk-buttered backside and we will have such fun looking at it. We will look at it until the fruit-flies behind our corneas grow in impatience and size (they grow quickly in all things at once, out of spite I imagine) and pound their pretty bodies against the glass. Allow a few choleric cracks for good measure; this will let the icing drain through, trickling down our cheeks and spitting onto our plates before us. This is the rain that God filters out of blinding heaven.

Unlike most religions, we can tell for sure whether our God is really in the room. I cannot pray with Maeve unless the angels kneel around us, breathe warmth down our cello case bodies to our derrieres. In these breaths I see her, the way you’ve done her hair’s inspired. In these breaths I meet the requirements for human, I meet the precipice that is to want. Sitting stagnant now in the tunnel that is her vision, the wanting is a memory. You once shepherded your breath into me, into her and this is what prevents the memory from slipping into dream. Desire was a tourist in my body, I can’t forget, I can’t shake anything without your tutelage, I frankly don’t think you could shake it if you tried. She was a devious tourist, graffitied the catacombs where I think my intestines would lie, expressing her unfamiliarity with the lack thereof. Carelessly adventurous within the tunnel of a secret, she was your daughter. Do you have a daughter? That could delay the rapture. Our rapture isn’t meteorotic, rather a mold, gradual yet too tired to taunt us, too tired to take piss. Maybe I’m tired, maybe we all are. If we’ve never pissed maybe we always have been. If my backside were perforated and strung I’d remind the party that I only feel my stomach empty because I’ve felt it otherwise.

Whilst I’m confined to staring at a whisper of desire that is ancient, my sacred question, mummified by time, Fiadh is fixed east towards the dining room window. I forget her cheeks like I’ve forgotten Clodagh’s left profile. Fiadh’s keeping watch for when a moon or two of yours preys through, she has been for a while. We could do with some light in here. If your teeth haven’t melted into the wartime soil then we could fix them to the chandelier. It would no longer matter if they were to fall and ripple the chamomile. Can you lick silence and describe the taste? I’ve missed you.

Kisses, I imagine,

Little Susie

Written by Ashlee Palmer.

Ashlee is an emerging writer and creative from Australia currently studying journalism. Her work has previously been published by Nowhere Girl Collective and Sprig Magazine. She unfortunately refrains from collecting antique dolls in fear they may be haunted, and another spirit really wouldn't fit onto her plate right now. She's graciously indebted to your eyes and ears for their patience and at time of submission is immensely craving boiled eggs. 

Instagram: @ashlee.pm