FICTION
their time together finally ended, its most inevitable part. She pulled the covers over him and looked around the room, her eyes accustomed to the dark. The walls were decorated with pictures of bees, cutouts from magazines and Simon’s own vibrant drawings, and of flowers (he always appreciated greatly the fundamental role they played in the bees’ work, although he admitted he could not see any particularly profound beauty outside of this). What few toys he had were arranged in one corner, a pleasant tableau in which each seemed perfectly and inviolably placed, and his multitude of books were not arranged on the shelves in any alphabetical order, but instead by colour (harmony was Simon’s ultimate goal in all things). She looked back to Simon, his image driving the cold from her mind for a moment, from her very skin, and sat in the chair she always did, to look at him a little longer. She looked at him, a little longer, her face still pulled slightly into that restrained smile, but under the force of the shadows that framed the pictures of the bees, the vicious cold that all of a sudden returned to her, burrowing to her bones, the mocking crackle of the fire, the silence in the room, the vast and bloated silence which was punctuated for the first and last time by the broken rhythm of her caught breath alone and nothing else, under the force of her own love she began to weep, racked, convulsing. She wept for her Simon, and she did not stop even as the cold and shadow was driven away by morning. already mentally preparing yourself for the calculus quiz you forgot to study for, when you see the one that always carries a sketchbook in your peripheral vision. Her head is bent low as she walks, as if she were trying to hide: a technique that seems practiced. Perfected with years of work. You let your mouth curl up in a smile as you pass, but she either ignores you or just didn’t see you as you crossed her path. You forget about her quickly. Calculus kicks your ass that day and your mom still hasn’t forgiven you for the poor grade you brought home that evening. …she’s not one for talking really i think ive only spoken to her once and shes kinda weird like she draws all these women in her sketchbook and i mean this is small town oklahoma does she think she can keep it hidden forever one
crushing, the bleakness that she faced every time she carried Simon to his bedroom, the bleakness she often felt she could only have faced with her son in her arms, she, as ever, did not miss a step nor lose her balance. Now she was at his door and she leaned back slightly to accommodate whilst she nudged it open with the fingertips of one hand, the other holding Simon up, even now so careful not to let him fall, her child, wrought from the most delicate crystal. It was cold upstairs, much colder than by the fire, and especially so in Simon’s room. She could not hold back a slight shiver in the face of the chill, and she thought to herself that this might be the coldest it had ever been, and that in the innumerable times she had brought Simon back here, holding him as they crossed together into his room, his place that was sacrosanct merely by his occupation of it, his own temple to his own joy, in which she could never truly share, when she delivered her little god to his own altar, it had never felt so much like oblivion. She laid him down with seraphim grace, her hand cradling his head, Simon, so still and so limp and silent, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, the warmth of the fire now gone from his body, prey to the cold, and as she did she could not bear to do so, but the motion, the motion practiced so many times, had already fulfilled itself and he was on the bed with her standing and looking at him, their contact now broken. It was always the part of the ritual she hated most, when EllaPound (Year 13, Charter School) Oklahoma, 1993 Y ou’re not sure when you first noticed them. They sit in the corner of the cafeteria. The air seems thicker around their table; the light pallid and washed out. You can’t quite seem to place any of them. You think you have a class with the one that sits on the left, but you could be easily mistaking her for someone else. The students at your school tend to blur into one when you think too hard. September quickly turns into October. November brings scarves and evenings that turn dark early, the school bus home navigating the ink-stained streets. The only thing that changes at the table in the corner is the coats haphazardly thrown over the back of the uncomfortable plastic chairs. You’re hurrying through the hallway one afternoon,
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