D6 ∞ Clara

you're gonna lose control, tonight.

I.

I think I saw her in a dream last night.
With rosy cheeks, so red that coals burned across her sulking face,
Mother’s hand clenching her forearm, an unbreakable grasp locked to me.
A matchbox found it’s way into my paw print hands: hands dirty, with festering sores
from missed attempts with sewing needles.
It was me who struck the match, tossed it in the pit, twisted down the
oil slick pathways, and set them ablaze, we were witches in the night, I even wore
black for the occasion.

I woke up screaming.

II.

There are small cracks in the aging bricks of the church.
Each one is possessed by a soul of the departed,
she used to tell me that one soul can’t
be quantified, but I say that it can.
I know, for a fact, that a soul is
(my calloused fingertips are pressed together
tight enough to be juuuuust able to just see through them)
this big.
I read a book on astral planes once, called
The Theory of Astral Planes, real original,
I thought. There sits millions
millions
millions, of different places on this
this
this earth, where souls can roam free
free.
If a soul can fit through a hole juuuuuuuuust this big, and there are places that souls can roam free,
my mother and my sister sit in two of the cracks in this old church home.
If there is a God, and I don’t believe in him,
and if there is a God, and he doesn’t believe in me,
at least I believe in the whispers of brick I call my family.

III.

Three months ago, I had Father take down every mirror in the house.
We have bad enough luck without having to smash the glass.
and I kept having nightmares that
I’d look into one and see a corpse standing behind me. the second part is secret.
With mirrors, there are too many people in this house,
a thousand other me’s staring at my
terrible natural disposition and laughing
at the unfortunate truth of being the
Not Pretty Sister. She used to say,
“You’ll grow into your looks, after all,” she’d flip her silver hair,
“I did.”
Without reflective surfaces there are only six five four of us left,
our numbers are dwindling.
There are less Hartmyre’s left than curls in my greased
black hair, numbers were dwindling, and I can’t
bother to look at my reflection
in case I disappear too.

IV.

Mom is dead.
Esther is “dead.”
Florence is dead.
Teddy is.. dead.
There are twelve corpses I have yet to mutilate today in the church foyer.

V.

Tip tap. Tip tap.
Tonight, they shuffle along cobble hallways.
Tip tap. Tip tap.
They always repeat the same patterns.
Tip tap. Tip tap.
The sound runs, dripping water from a leaky faucet, through her mind all day.
Tip tap. Tip tap.
There is no counter to the sounds in her brain.
Tip tap. Tip tap.
Tomorrow, she will walk away until it disintegrates.
Tip tap. Tip tap.
Too bad she’ll never see their face.
Tip tap. Tip tap.

VI.

Mother always said that my hair looked it’s best when it
hung low hugging my shoulders, caressing them.
It was short, she would saw, but it framed my face -
good enough to hang up on the wall, I’d ask.
Good enough for the fridge, she’d say. And every
day since, I’d take a picture for the oncoming crowds,
Ms. Hartmyre! Over here! Click!

- Thank you, thank you, but that’s enough, no really.

Florence always said that my hair would probably look better
if I grew it out, too childish, she would say. Don’t you
ever want to grow up? And I was ask, do you really
want to grow older? Yes, she would say. No, I would
reply. It frames my face. But it doesn’t hide your button nose,
and huge bushy eyebrows. Ms. Hartmyre! Over here! You look terrible!
Click.

- Thank you, thank you, but that’s enough, no really.

Hartmyre girls were slim as twigs - it was an ongoing pandemic
but pretty girls are meant to be fragile, and I’m a tray of wine glasses
hoisted upon an untrained waiter, waiting to smash to the grounds.

Maybe just one picture.

Click.

VII.

I never look them right in the eye.
It’s not that I’m afraid or anything, it’s just that -
what would happen if they woke up, and they saw a little girl
with a scalpel and a sewing needle, standing above their open torso.

It isn’t easy to explain to a man who’s just woke up from intensive surgery
the his liver is now in the place of his heart, and his heart is in the place
of the boiler room furnace. Who needs one of those anyways?

Maybe one day, I’ll be a doctor - she used to say
I’d be a seamstress just like her, but just watch Mother,
just watch. I can be so much more.

“Doctor, you’re needed for much kneeeeded surgery.”
“What’s the matter, Doctor.”
“Well a patient needs his knee cap replaced by his breast bone.”
“Yes he does, yes he does.”

Mother, I’ll be a doctor yet.