yellow sunshine.
an excerpt

She only sat on the red leather couch. She no longer slept. She spent three hours each day running a comb through her hair. She refused to read the news. She had no friends. She had many enemies. She had family. She had no family she loved. She insisted that people did not use her name. She drank only tea and she rarely ate. She pretended to be nostalgic. She told me that she loved me. She never let me touch her hair. “Get me a flower and put it in a vase,” she instructed. She couldn’t see.

I used the dying flowers from the garden and the weeds too and I made flowers out of paper and I cut off a lock of my hair and used it as grass. I watered them with lemon tea and the bottle of vodka that I found by the window. I put them in the three cracked bottles and placed them on the mantle, but she told me to bring them to the couch. I put them on the couch, but one bottle fell to the ground and shattered. I told her that the sound came from next door and she believed me, even though the house next door was abandoned.

We always knew. We sat together on the red leather couch. She brushed her hair. I made flowers out of her books. She asked me what I was doing. I told her I was thinking. She asked me what my hands were doing. I told her they were folded. She asked me why she happened. I told her that I didn’t understand the question. She felt the lock of my hair in the vase and wanted more. I cut another lock. She wanted more. I cut my hair to above my ears.

Everything became pretty to us. “That’s a pretty tree.” “That’s a pretty bottle.” “That’s a pretty weed.” “That’s a pretty cloud.” I could see in ways that she was unable to. She could see in ways that I was unable to. We were two eyes, a set, a pair, a balance. I was left, she was right. And later, she was left and I was right. She was old and I was young. I was old and she was new. She was wrinkled and I was smooth. She was bitter and I was polite. We were pretty.