MARIAM

Two girls like tulips, one red one white. She shares a name with a silent movie star and the other with the fated love of Cyrano de Bergerac. Mariam Edey Adelaida, hiding in the closet from the prophetic voice of thunderstorms, covering her ears with small pink hands like flower petals. The windows caked with salt. The windows of her childhood, her heart born in a deep red shadow. They go up the hill like Jack and Jill, swinging purses full of water, water drops on dust, the sidewalk dirt and rocks to stumble through in their high heels, no barefoot children only young men in striped scarves and gentle gutters filled with candy wrappers, confetti, coffee stains. Black silk stockings, black high heel shoes go wandering past busy storefronts, white silk stockings and black kitten heels. Two pairs of red lips, two girls. A woman sits out front of the cafe in a long cambric nightgown. Her millionaire lover on a string, her dog at her heels. One girl whistles to it, softly. They walk into a white room, plaster ceilings and floor of green grass. The room is cloyed with the scent of mowed lawn, of recess and eating sunflower seeds, spitting shells into a river. This is Hollywood, top hat full of jewels, a white room full of flowers and two girls in black. In the back a naughty boy wanders with bare feet, a girl wearing a petticoat as a gesture of love. The room carousels around the center, a volcano made of flowers, of hydrangeas and carnations; clouds of aster and sweetpea swing as ornaments from the sky. The girls smile brilliantine, stand in line digging the heels of their shoes into the turf, accepting paper cups of spiked hot chocolate from a woman in a white mandarin dress with hibiscus in her hair. The ground shimmers, a low rumbling growl that tickles up their spines. The two girls turn back to laugh and wave and over cappuccinos next door they hear the seismic boom! of the volcano erupting, the orgasmic cries of the crowd as they ahhhhh over the flurry of petals that spring into the air and fall to the grass as sweetly as those from the hand of a flower girl at a wedding.



roxanne m carter is clumsy in high heels, but elegant in the water and on the internet (like swans. swans are so dashing and debonair online). she makes books with her bare hands and a power drill, and you are invited to visit her at persephassa.com.


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