Writing by Alexis Williams // Photograph by Ciglia
Writing by Alexis Williams // Photograph by Ciglia
It was late. The beams of starlight and the eye of the night shined through the sheer curtains for hours. She was a can of laughter wavering like the inflatables on the side of a car wash. She was intoxicated by the sound of her own voice; logical sense unable to be calculated in her head since she took her first drink.
Someone told her to do it and she didn’t think, she couldn’t– think. Back when she was herself, she would’ve rejected the thought if her mind was sober. She didn’t think; she could hurt her best friends, she could hurt people she didn’t know, she could hurt his friends:
Sisters, parents, everyone.
But a small spark in her body, conscious and aware, hoped that everything would be okay. And they have been, even if she doesn’t know who she’s hurt. So she went on, using her tiny, teenage, intoxicated mind to do what would change the course of her moral scope and behavior; though she didn’t know it.
That choice, stupid, idiotic, lovely choice changed her. And the change moved her with such fluidity that you wouldn’t question whether or not she’d been that way her whole life, like that’s who she was meant to be. It would convince you that, fate works in such a way that even if she didn’t make the choice right then, she would nevertheless grow to be the daunting haughty person she is now.
Night crept on the walls of her room and eventually, the lights went out and the bad seed was planted. As innocence took her appearance and thoughts, she slept. And the vine of thorned roses grew. Everyday she picked the produce of the vine fluidly becoming the roses she gathered.
Half-thoughts, the morning after, at the speed of molasas, thickened into her consciousness. Tethering half-thoughts to coherent memories in her shakened mind, she soon opened her blind eye, staring at the nothingness on her ceiling as the heat set in. Her mind moving from the speed of a tortoise on a hot summer day to the dash of a hare too evasive for ominous advice. And yes, with her thoughts running a mile a minute she realized that last night, she was the hare; now she’s sure to lose.
She curled her toes at the thought of her inevitable defeat, though it hasn’t come, but she was so inexplicably excited that she has started the race. Because she loves too much, the sand beneath her toes as she rips through the earth, the clean crisp smell of freedom, the beauty of the creatures she’s surrounded by, and the way they look as she bolts past them. She loves being filled with feeling, she loves love. And perhaps that will be her downfall.
