In the vast expanse she called her home, there was death, and there was birth. Life was violent, starting from the first breath, and of this, she knew first hand.
She also knew pain, and in the same way that boxers always bounced back from every hit, she was happy, and it was enough.
~~~
Her room was large and small. Small, of course, because she was there, and large, of course, because she was there. Within and without--like a fire escaping up a chimney into the eternal chill it wished to combat.
~~~
This was all that she had known--maiden creeping up her side, it's fibers attaching themselves to her clothes and scalp--dirty feet and wandering eyes led her to explore the banks of the wilderness she alone had tamed, and it was enough.
It had always been enough.
~~~
Every day, at 3pm, she was required to swim in her pool for 30 minutes. Clean, of course, and alone.
The water moved around her, avoiding her skin--diffraction, the bending of a wave around a barrier.
She was blocking everything, and her thirty minutes were up.
~~~
This is love, she thought, staring across the dinner table into the inky silk that was her mother's hair. It cascaded down her shoulders into a low ponytail, and her father pulled on it.
Yes, she thought, as her mother giggled and threw food at her father, this is love.
~~~
It was her birthday, and she was alone.
Of course, she was never alone, as her father liked to remind her. The nanny ("Assistant, dear. She's an assistant.") lived with them for a reason.
For her special day, she gifted herself by waking up late, and stayed in bed all day, drifting in between consciousness and the sweet release of delta waves and the humming of her air filter. Sometime between 2pm and 3:30pm (she wouldn't know, she was asleep) a twelve pack of store-created cupcakes appeared on her desk.
They disappeared over the course of the day, and she was alone.
YOU ARE READING
African Violets and the Search for Pale Gold
Teen Fiction"this was fucking love," she thought. she knew it was love in the same way her father could make smoke turn into hearts and blow them into her mother's face, or how her mother could make even the sharpest corners of their lives turn soft. this was l...
