MABEL
If he was a ghost, then she was some eldritch abomination, meant to be tucked in between stripped boughs and haunting eaves, a thing carved out and hollow, empty, a wandering, meandering vessel. It would all come back with time, with moments not sparse and stretched out, when the sea no longer echoed in her ear drums, when the pieces finally fit once more. His name came on the wind and she didn’t know it, didn’t recognize it, for anything it might’ve been worth, considered its weight and value for an instant. Then it dissipated into her mind, to rest amongst the others. “Mabel.” No meaning intermingled there either, just a girl alive, then dead and gone, and reborn again.
She waited for something – a comment, a musing, a mulling about the state and situation of the house. Wondered if she would care, if he didn’t like it, if his shoulders shrugged, if he thought it would cave in on them at any moment. There were instances where she would’ve liked to see it burn or fall; one last monument to the tethers of her life before. But then she didn’t, because it was a shelter, and a holder of memories, of siblings who’d never been at fault for the flaws clawing at their insides.
But nothing was uttered, and the youth nodded those implications away too – gliding down the memorized halls and expecting him to follow. Some of the rooms they passed still contained their adornments from the past, neither Evelyn nor Mabel had found the need to remove the toys their brothers and sisters had left behind, the bedspreads dusty, the floors littered with fragments of yesteryears.
They wandered through the kitchen, which wouldn’t bear significance for them any longer, to the very end of the hall, which still held its old claw-footed tub, the piping and plumbing still hopefully up to standard. Her hands went for towels and clothes nestled along shelving, pausing for her own inspection – and then stopped, uncertain over what he wanted to do first. Thereafter, she glided over the hardwood floors once more, only to retrieve her sewing kit.
She waited for something – a comment, a musing, a mulling about the state and situation of the house. Wondered if she would care, if he didn’t like it, if his shoulders shrugged, if he thought it would cave in on them at any moment. There were instances where she would’ve liked to see it burn or fall; one last monument to the tethers of her life before. But then she didn’t, because it was a shelter, and a holder of memories, of siblings who’d never been at fault for the flaws clawing at their insides.
But nothing was uttered, and the youth nodded those implications away too – gliding down the memorized halls and expecting him to follow. Some of the rooms they passed still contained their adornments from the past, neither Evelyn nor Mabel had found the need to remove the toys their brothers and sisters had left behind, the bedspreads dusty, the floors littered with fragments of yesteryears.
They wandered through the kitchen, which wouldn’t bear significance for them any longer, to the very end of the hall, which still held its old claw-footed tub, the piping and plumbing still hopefully up to standard. Her hands went for towels and clothes nestled along shelving, pausing for her own inspection – and then stopped, uncertain over what he wanted to do first. Thereafter, she glided over the hardwood floors once more, only to retrieve her sewing kit.
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
