The Diary of Lily Andrist: Entry 4

 

I sit on the wooden bench, damp with yesterday’s raindrops. I feel it soak through my skirt, but I don’t get up. The Girl with the Fierce Eyes is waving her hands jerkily. She is angry with the Boy on the Phone.

“Meet my friends...I just want...no you listen...I’m not finished no.... two years…”

I wait for her tears but they don’t come. I don’t understand that. I think about my anger, how it’s a hurricane. How it always begins with storm-cloud-eyes and ends in thrashing, churning, waves of tears. How they collapse the wooden houses and flood the gravel streets that wind their way over the planes of my skin.

I cry almost once a day but it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes other people see but that doesn’t bother me anymore either. It is far better to feel too much and too often than nothing and never at all. Willow Tree Girl sits in my heart and she sings and weeps and dances and laughs and storms and needs and fears and longs. And I listen to her. Her brown eyelashes are mine, and we blink together.

I sit next to her and she reminds me of The Girl who Moved Away.

The sky is so blue. I watch my fingertips dissolve in it. It hides the stars but I know they are there. I hear them telling secrets about what they see from above. I’ll never tell what I hear from the stars in the day, when they are hidden behind their painted curtain.

I call her because I need her voice. I miss the way that the red tea, cold as ice, left a ring on every table I set it on. I miss her mirror image eyes and lips but different nose. She reminds me of the importance of reconciliation. I listen and the grass grows up to my forehead.

“I love you baby.”

“I love you too.”

I eat dumplings with chopsticks and they burst in my mouth and I am delighted. I eat one after the other and remind myself that I am unafraid. Her voice makes music I don’t understand. It’s soft and slippery and sounds like sparkling silver fish racing downstream. Her smile is a rainbow, glittering after rain. She is an island downpour while the sun is still out, coating the palm fronds in glittering dewdrops.

Later, we walk in the dark. His eyes blend with the night and I fall into his chest. I lead him down to the beach. I smell the sour smell of things my mother warned me about and try not to be nervous. Someone is burning leaves. My shadow is fragmented and hurries to catch up. We walk down to the sand and the cliff bends. So do we. My back presses against the crumbling sand and there is nobody around. The ocean curls her long silky white eyelashes and blinks at us. We find our familiarities and it’s so comforting. But I am hesitant and anxious. The owl on my shoulder turns her head in a full circle. My sweater is spotted with beige sand. It’s ok to be in love. It’s ok to feel. Right?

It’s complicated. There’s all this writing on my skin. He tries to read every word but it’s all in Greek. It’s written with no spaces and no punctuation and it goes left to right to left. We crane our necks to try and figure out what is says but we can only make out bits and pieces. I try to ask the ocean what to do. But her wisdom is too vast for me to comprehend.

I watch myself in the mirror. I am jealous of her but I would not trade. I remind myself that our struggles are the same but different. I was too quiet on the phone today. She thought something was wrong. I told her I was hungry. I wasn’t. I tried to ask questions, but all my sugar had run out and there was only pink salt on the bottom of the jar. “He said he loves me and I am so happy.”