A Book of Words That Never Seem To Be Enough

Woman

Her home was in that kitchen, no other room welcomed her. I would watch closely as her fingernails scratched the surface of the broken down countertop. There were short and curt scratches, the ones where she'd be quick and easy. There were longer ones, the ones that had taken more time and effort because there had been more thought put into the curves of them.

Once her fingernails had become dim and less sharp from their hard work, she'd go into the salon to get them redone. Vivid and bright colors every single time, contrasting against her dull personality.

She would wait, standing in front of the sink which was old and had an unnerving smell, I couldn't be near it for more than five minutes. But she stood there for hours in silence, her fingers giving way to her impatience.

Then there was her smile, that god awful smile that always had me internally rolling my eyes at. Her teeth bright with chemicals, the bleach from her mouthwash relevant in the sharpness of her minty breath.

She was the perfection that I had dreamed of once when I still believed in fairytales. Listening to the click of her high heels tapping against the uneven kitchen tile.

Always wearing a brightly colored apron, she would be ready when we needed her, listening to our lists of demands and complaints. Her fingers were deft with the precision that no one around this deadbeat town had.

She was white in a sea of gray, and I wanted her gone.

Her voice had no accent, it had no southern drawl to it that I had read was attractive in books. It wasn't hers, nothing seemed to be.

The windows that she'd stare out of all day were dirty, not having been cleaned in probably years. She made no move to clean them though, the yellowing oldness of it not seeming to bother her. I wondered if on the mornings where the clouds caused the blue to turn away, if those were her favorite kind of days.

    I had presumed that I hated her, counting each and every one of her flaws loudly on my fingers since I was twelve, not wanting my friends from school to ever meet her.

Any move she'd make, any new color she'd try for her growing hair made me want to look at her less and less. Begging for her to just leave, wanting to shout that she didn't belong here with us. To tell her that I hated her for trying to be perfect. Wanting to cut and file down her ugly nails that would blind me for days, leaving me straggling along the path to school whenever her hands came close to my face to kiss me goodbye. I wanted her gone.

Then she was.

Just like that, her bright pink suitcase that looked too nice in my dust-covered house carrying everything that she was disappeared along with her. She no longer stared out of my old kitchen window, watching the empty land that we owned move its way towards her in slow motion.

    I now stood in the empty kitchen, my bitten down fingernails tracing the scars she had made when she was here.

The small wooden tears giving a vague sense of comfort. A feeling where when I would close my eyes I could picture my mother straightening the hem of her now battered yellow and blue apron, the one I had once loved, wiping her tears and leaving us behind for good.