Lily Valley

Halah Iris

Heavy two a.m eyes, crusted with deep black mascara, stare back at you in a dusty window. With your gentle fingers, you press your lashes up to your brow and your knuckles are left with strays of Covergirl residue. Clump Crusher.

The sill of the window encases you like a wanted poster, but as your lips press to the glass in a goodbye kiss, you're looking back at yourself once again, seeing a flier for underaged drinking and the dangers of it.

A carnivorous mouth smothered with red possibility and with hair still pinned up between his fingers, even though you've left his bed days ago.

You still feel his hands over you, in you, beneath you. Heart beating like the bass on your favorite song under his collar bones and your legs speaking the language of more.

The sandals were ritualistic, they were high heels on a catwalk—slapping against the wooden porch and creaky doors, you really couldn't wear these shoes without feeling your clit twitch. You noticed yourself relating everything to him, sometimes his smile, more than often how he made you feel pretty. You wondered if you'd come back to this place in some time from now and still feel that trembling and twitching all around when you see fireflies and another red mustang.

It's a real good summer.

Change it. Change it. Change it until it's better.

You couldn't say that now, not when dressed like this. Not when countering your comfortable imprisonment with dress-up and colors splattered across your cheeks like animal print.

Not when you had one thing on your mind:

Jean Kirstein.

You were seeing him everywhere, following you around like all your lethal decisions come to life. Even when you thought you shouldn't, you wanted to see him.

With the loaded gun in his nightstand drawer and the wipe of his wrist along his cunt-tasting lips, you left a love note in his bed, your spine writing in cursive as you rolled to your side in his sheets, one last kiss, then another.

It's been only three days since and your skin is still hot to the touch, your eyes seemed to have gone into black and blue bruises, still looking as they did in his dark room at midnight.

They never seemed to light up at anything but him, even as the sun rose through your blinds that morning—you couldn't sleep after that, after him. He forced you into insomnia, into criminalistic sweetness that most girls would be afraid of, and you loved it.

You didn't mind that they stayed rolled back, he said it was a pretty look on you. Or did you say that?

And now you're dressed for him, you've been waiting up all night. Losing sleep, gaining energy. Sometimes you forget.

Just beyond the wooden ceiling fan, you can hear fireflies and singing cicadas groveling against the soil.

Maybe summer was washing away too fast. You wished it would stay a cool, crisp 72 at night then coast across the sky in the afternoon when the 94 degree sun begins to melt off your makeup, taking your bra and panties with it.

Maybe you wanted the summer back a year ago, a month ago. Paint it all over. Relive it again.

A year ago when you were only in swimsuits and tight, ruffled tops. Eating ice cream for breakfast, dipping your feet into the river to escape the heat. Familiar leaves falling from familiar trees. Nobody touched you, men lingered in their reflection off your melted lip gloss, except him. He's there too.

You felt blue, unlawfully beautiful, ribboned up in green marks from cheap rings and the plastic wrap from junk food, shaken in your bathroom, stomach feeling like a snow globe; meditation and medication; reading and responding.