April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow. Blanketing our loved ones, the earth feeds a little life with dried tubers. Summer arrived unbidden, unfolding with surprising brilliance. Heat lingered and laughter spilled into days that faded under the amber sky, as though the world itself refused to forget.
She pressed the ceramic mug to her lips, savoring the apple cider aroma before warming her belly with a sip. Fall brought the crisp air of nostalgia. "Shhhhamira," a voice whispered through the breeze, her late grandfather's words carried on the wind. The sight of the horizon sent a glaze over her eyes, and she stared wistfully, watching as sun-drenched colors danced—auburn and gold, wood shadows weaving broken images into her vision. She pieced them together, seeing a barefoot girl sprinting across the pavement.
Memories drifted in: days spent at her grandparents' house, where mud pies were molded and holiday lights gleamed in suburban cul-de-sacs. Her grandfather had warned that bare feet would invite illness, so as the earth turned to fall, he brewed apple cider to fight off the cold of the new season.
She took another sip of the cider and smiled. The scrunch of her facials let a single teardrop hang from the rim of her lashes. She watched it fall, shattering the last piece of imagery from Mnemosyne. Cardamom and clove circulated through her senses, bringing cold clarity. She slipped on some socks and started chasing the sun–fading, like the cherished memories of her past.
Unreal City, under the brown fog of smog and cigarettes, sweat and cologne, sex and crime, without punishment. She traded bare feet for blistering heels, stepping through rats’ alley where dead men lost their bones.
CLICK CLACK, CLICK CLACK, CLICK CLICK CLACK
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, as she crept softly by. Each man fixed his eyes before her exposed bosom. It was better this way. This way she remained faceless, unrecognizable to another soul. Just a body, porcelain and bare, waiting to rest with other bones of the dead. Madame Sosostris is what they call her, famous lady of the night. She had a bad cold that not even cider could cure. Nonetheless, the show must go on.
Flickering lights led her to the Cannon Street Hotel. The room seemed to shift as she entered, the air thick with a strange perfume—synthetic and heavy, a blend of unguent and smoke, wrapping around her like a veil, soft and suffocating, drowning her senses. The chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, glowed against the marble floor. Glass held up by standards wrought with delicate vines, from which a golden Cupidon peered out, mischievous and eternal. Another Cupid hid his eyes behind a wing, as though ashamed of the scene before him. The flames from the seven-branched candelabra doubled, reflecting off the glass and the glitter of her jewels, which rose to meet the light in a dazzling array.
Men came and went, their faces as empty as their words. As the fire flare, she watched as the carvings on the mantel came to life. Huge sea-wood, twisted and smooth, burned with copper, casting green and orange hues across the room. A dolphin, carved from stone, seemed to swim through the smoke, its sad eyes watching the scene unfold beneath it. The walls leaned in and she watched as the vines carved into the walls begin to move. They crawled like serpents, slithering around their bodies, weaving them together like Philomel’s tapestry. The room filled with her involible voice as her shift ended for the night.
Time withered into stumps, the story of the night told on the walls of the Cannon, the remnants of half-lived memories. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair spread out in fiery points glowed into words, then remained savagely still.
Lingering longer than she would’ve liked, the last man of the night laid by her side, lighting a drag.
“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad.” He said. “Stay with me. Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think.” Like a nightingale he sang his song.
“I think we are in rats’ alley, where the dead men lost their bones.” She said, soulessly.
‘What is that noise?’ He chirped back.
The wind under the door.
‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’
Nothing again nothing.
‘Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember Nothing?’
I remember, those are pearls that were his eyes.
‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’
Her face disappeared, and then her body as she slipped back into the night.
CLICK CLACK, CLICK CLACK, CLICK CLICK, CLICK, CLACK
Tired ankles navigate cobblestone as if the River Styx rushes below. Belladonna, lady of the rocks, the lady of situations. Torchlights red on sweaty faces while hers remains unlit. After the agony in stony places, the shouting and the crying, the prison and palace, the reverberation of thunder sprang over distant mountains. Shhhhhhhammmiiiirraaaaa. There it was again. She followed the music. Bats with baby faces in the violet light whistled and beat their wings. Tolling reminiscent bells that kept the hours drummed the drack of dawn. The voice, Shamira, singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
She reached home. Hearing giggles behind the door, she walked in to find her cup of cider still sitting, half sipped. She boiled the kettle and set to rest her faceless head. The tea kettle whisped to her, soft but alluring. What have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart—the awful daring of a moment’s surrender—which an age of prudence can never retract. By this, and this only, we have existed, which is not to be found in our obituaries, or in memories draped by the beneficent spider Mnemosyne, or under seals broken by the debt collector, but in our empty rooms. She who was living is now dead, we who were living are now dying. With little patience.