An un-beating heart doesn’t know its place. Cold streets dole out cable car people. I pass by and light reflects from shiny crowns. I wonder how they wash their hair.
When the smell of sunburnt coffee house and idling afternoon cars wafts up from warm pavement, I walk with insects. Away from the hospital I blank out, not taking notice of where I am until I board a bus and take a seat about halfway along. Golden sunlight glows in greased finger tracks across the window. My head flips around, to see the bus is nearly empty. I shudder as I remember your things—your effects—and that I should have them. They are there, on my lap. I’m clutching them tightly.
At our home I place what the hospital has given me onto our bed. I wake up and the sun still shines, casting shadows like spider silk over our net curtain as it billows quietly in temperate air. I don’t remember opening the window but I’m glad I did. It’s good to watch movement in the room.
A sound pumps from below, but stops as I open my eyes wider. I think of what it could be: a neighbour’s footsteps travelling lowly through the old building’s foundations; something alive trapped in the walls; the noise of my blood pulsing, amplified by the position of my ear, smooshed into the pillow. I twitch and stare at your things, your effects. The bag you’ve carried for so long, creased and stained around the edges, inexpensive, practical. Running through a list of these things hurts. The other bag hurts more. It sits beside your bag, the smell of the hospital hanging around it. A plastic bag, transparent apart from lettering I can’t read from my position on our bed. It holds the items you had with you, in your pockets, your ring, your earrings. I can see a solitary mint sweet in its wrapper. I’m going to suck on it, I think.
Later I tip the contents of your bag onto our bed. I recognise most of it. It’s a mess. Your makeup bag takes up the largest space. Inside I wiggle my fingers around. I don’t know what I’m doing.
In the morning I haven’t tidied anything away. Black smoke tows the wind outside. Your makeup fills my work room up. I hold your lipstick. Its scent curling upwards makes me nauseous. I form your mouth on my easel. Scatters of powder hit my canvas where your face should be. I pencil with your eyeliner, and it leaves a pair of white spaces. No eyelashes or brows, your makeup applied as it would’ve been on your skin. I sit until it’s nearly dark, then fill in the white ovals with eyeshadow, as if you’ve lowered your lids.
My back aches from standing so long. I pick up your makeup bag, turn your eyeliner pencil towards my face and head to the bathroom mirror.
Will those Nefertiti eyes be washed away, before setting you in your closed casket? I don’t know if you still have a face, only that you’ve been identified by other means and it’s not advisable for me to request to view you. I drag thick charcoal black around my eyelids, crush past lashes. I never did have a steady hand but the shake it picked up since you left means I’m drawing you thickly and wrong.
The smell of blusher rushes up my nose. The glimmer of it smears my fingerprints and I rub dusky pink colour around my cheekbones, trying to see you in the mirror, the insouciance of your gaze those times you’d fix your face in place. My cheeks are sallow and the powder sinks, however much I push and pinch.
I jam your lipstick around my mouth until my thin lips look like a hog’s kiss. I want what’s left of you, your remnant cells, in the beeswax, your bee-stung smile. The oil thickens the more I press, and it slathers on me in layers until half the stick is gone, thick red clots over my gnashers, a mush on my gob. I smack my lips like a lost guppy.
When the night reaches me I curl onto our bed. I must sleep, because I wake in dark hours and when I cannot see the room I feel for the pillow on your side of our bed. I roll over to smoosh and push my face into where you rested your head, to force an imprint of you out of me.
The morning brings light and cramp that infects the whole place. I wiggle around to make myself feel. I’ve been crying in my sleep, there’s a familiar crinkle on my skin. A clear rasp runs deep in my chest and I lift myself up, flop around, drop my heels to the floor. I remember that I tried to make your face in the night and turn to look quick. The pillow image sucks my life, it aches in spoiled grease, smudged mockery. It tears out any hope of you. This shroud face of a clown wish. Your cells aren’t there—they are with me. I rush to the bathroom mirror, and as I thought, the wreck of your blurred edifice coagulates across me. My eyes burn to see you. I take tweezers from your bag and push my features back, out of the way of yours. I’ll be a living relic, DNA scraped into my lips, your fluid traces mixed with my seepages. As chunks fall from my mouth I smile, knowing I’ll carry your holy grin with mine across the whole world.
💄🪞
