Short Stories

mistakes

He smells of cherries. I used to hate them, but now I find myself going through packet after packet until my teeth are stained red. It almost looks like blood. I don't know what kind of omen that is. It seems like a bad one, but he is just so good. I think that I am in love. Maybe the red is my love for him. Maybe it is spilling out of my lips.

I have decided that the red is, in fact, my love for him. One word to him about it and then every other word was coming out with it, slipping over each other like marbles. I don't even remember swallowing any marbles, but maybe they are why I have felt so heavy lately. Now I am as light as a feather. He holds my hands to keep me down on earth, and I memorize the lines of his palms.

His lips taste less of cherries and more of mint toothpaste. I suppose that that makes sense. Green is for growth and rebirth and new, new, new. It tastes sharp and clean, and it suits him. I wonder where the cherry smell is from. I stop eating them, but my teeth keep turning red. I cannot get them out from underneath my fingernails. I wonder if he feels them there when he holds my hand.

Crows live in the tree outside of his windowsill. They have sharp eyes, like sharp mint. He is not sharp like a dagger. He is sharp in a tailored suit with a clean smile. I wonder how often he brushes his teeth, because he always tastes the same. No wonder his teeth are so white. He must keep spearmint gum under his tongue. I wonder where it goes when we kiss. I never find it in his mouth during or in my mouth afterwards.

I use mint toothpaste and chew spearmint gum but I cannot recreate his taste in my mouth without him. I brush my teeth nine times a day but I cannot get rid of the cherries. I taste them rotting in the back of my mouth, as if I am holding them there, whole. They still stain my teeth, and sometimes when I smile, my teeth look sharp. Sharp like him, maybe. The cherries leave spiderweb lines across my hands that I can't wash out. He doesn't mention them.

The crows like to watch me. Sometimes he watches me, too. His gaze is not red like the cherries I taste rotting or green like his mint kisses. His eyes are glassy marbles like the love confession I coughed up. Sometimes I can still feel something rolling around in my stomach. I don't know if they are marbles or his eyes. I wonder what he's looking at.

I teach myself to read palms so that I can feel his horoscope. Shallow grooves cross his hands every which way, and I know them better than my own. I don't smell the cherries as much anymore. I have yet to find any in his refrigerator. I wonder where the smell was from in the first place. His horoscope tells me that he is more than what he seems, but I already knew that. The cherry lines on my palms make it so that I cannot read my own.

My teeth are sharp now. Sharp like daggers, not like his tailored suit and clean smile. I cannot tell the blood of my bitten lips from the cherry stain. Now I only taste the cherries when I cough. Maybe my stomach is full of them instead of eyes or marbles. I wonder what his stomach is full of. I haven't heard a love confession from there yet.

He has a lot of mirrors up on the walls. When I walk by, I swear I can see myself blinking, like we are separate. Maybe he's been capturing tiny pieces of me and putting them into the mirrors to keep. Maybe I'm not light because I've coughed up marbles. Maybe I'm light because I gave part of me away. I buy a mirror from the home supplies store on the way home and hang it up by the door so I can keep some of him when he leaves.

The crows have eyes like marbles, like him. I wonder if they are looking at me with love, like my love marbles. Maybe they are telling my confessions with their eyes. I get lighter by the day, but I'm not sure whether or not I've been giving more of myself to his mirrors. I have yet to catch any of him in mine, and sometimes when we walk by it together, I don't even see him in it. I wonder why.

He hardly smells of cherries anymore, but I still pull the red skin from between my teeth when I floss. It isn't my love for him, after all, because I can feel my heart beating for him. My chest does not feel rotten like my mouth tastes. My lip is bitten to shreds. He still kisses me. The mint stings in the wounds, but I don't mind. His hand is still soft in my own.

Sometimes I hear my own voice talking to him when I have my mouth shut. I wonder if it is the mirror girl speaking. My lips are healing, but now they are sealed together. When I cough, the rotten cherries come up and fester in my mouth. Now and again, marbles come up, too, but when I try to let them spill out they just clink together, smooth against the inside of my lips.

He is still heavy, maybe heavier than before. I can tell because of the weight of his hand in mine. Now, my mirror shows a shadow of him, but it also only shows a shadow of me. I think that he has all his eyes, but I am sure that there are some crow eyes trapped inside of me. I wonder if they mind. They watch me less and less these days. Maybe it is because I carry them with me.

I cannot taste his mint through my sealed lips, but if I could, I think it would be like daggers and my teeth instead of tailored suits. I can see him changing. I cannot tell him. I try to learn sign language, but he doesn't let go of my hands. He keeps all of his marbles down without even a hiccup, and I wonder how I gave all of mine away. The mirror girl is heavier than I am, and for the first time I don't like my weightlessness.

The cherries are festering behind my teeth. I can feel my tongue decaying with them from disuse. He kisses me less and less, and the crows stare at the mirror girl. Soon, I think, she will come through the glass. My mirror doesn't show me, anymore, and it's been too long since he's been over for me to know if it shows him. I think it would. He is an anchor and I am a helium balloon. He lets go of my hand, and I drift away. My palm still shows cherry lines.

The bile that keeps coming up in my throat tastes of the spearmint gum I used to chew. Maybe I accidentally swallowed some when I was trying so hard to feel close to him. It mixes with the cherries, and it tastes even worse than I would think. My mirror girl smiles at me when I go by, but I don't smile back. I'm green with envy instead of mint. If I could, I would flip her the bird, but my hands are stuck in the shape that he held them in, like cement from a mold.

I think that even the crow eyes in my stomach have stopped paying attention. I follow him like a shadow, but he does not spare me a glance. The mirror girl chatters to him, and I can see her spilling marbles from her mouth. Now I can see him picking them up from the floor and swallowing them. My lips are far too stuck for me to tell her to stop. I don't know if my voice still works, anyways.

Now I see ghosts of myself walking alongside me, a cloud of rotting cherry girls following him about. Our lips have all grown shut. I reach out to touch them, the ghosts, but my hand goes right through. I watch him chew the spearmint gum that I couldn't find when he kissed me. I watch him become perfect in front of the mirrors and I see his sharp teeth once we have passed them.

The mirror girl is spouting more and more marbles. Around me, my ghosts fight against our lips, letting out silent screams. She doesn't hear. One of us breaks open, and then all of us do, mouths open but voices silent. We cannot speak. My teeth and tongue fall out with the crow eyes and the festering cherries and the marbles. The teeth look like pomegranate seeds. The smell of the cherries is so strong that my eyes water. The mirror girl glows on the other side of the glass.

The next time we see her, her teeth are stained red with cherries.