Her mother had smelt of lilacs, lying in state, hands folded prettily around a rosary from the old country. The child wanted nothing more than to climb inside the box and lie with her mother, lay her head on her mother’s breast, and have her own lips sewn shut. She had seen the stitches when she pressed her face close to hers. She had also seen the crescent moons of her mother’s eyes and wondered why her mother would sleep with her eyes cracked open. She had been slapped soundly when she had asked questions about any of this. The odour, the gossamer thread, the white slit of cornea. It had been her father’s brutish palm, of course, and Miss Plum, the nanny, urged her out of the parlor and back up the stairs and into the nursery which welcomed her like a diseased friend in a sick bed.
Her mother had a small and perfectly pruned lilac tree in a pot in the conservatory. Her mother had a talcum between her chafing thighs that smelled of flowers. She hid in the voluminous skirts until finally admonished and shamed in front of her uncle by her father and she remembered her mother’s face, the sadness. Her father was gifted at separating souls and dessicating them with a bitter tincture of loneliness.
Anna’s mouth had tasted of lilacs, but that was, of course, nonsensical. Had she ever touched the tip of her tongue to the riot of purple flowers as they dripped scent like petals? Anna had been the one to demure once she was engaged to Friedrich. And Friedrich watched her with an unblinking gaze of a snake like the one trapped behind a pane of spitty glass at the Tierpark that she swore had whispered a reptilian secret to her that day she and Anna had wandered to and fro arm in arm.
Friedrich brought his friend, Thomas, into her world. Her world was a cramped and contained thing, she a living corpse inside a satin lined coffin. Thomas ripped off the lid and insisted she step out and join him in spaces so wide and open and full of fresh air that when she was with him her heart soared like a bird and the sun darkened her skin and warmed her blood and she smelled nothing more than salted ocean air and long-grassed meadows and trees that bloomed with pink tulips.
That world was akin to the worlds one visits in a dream. Somehow, Thomas had made the dreaming world a waking one and her nightmares returned whenever she slept, dreams were for the days, nights were for the hauntings. Tortured flesh, piercing teeth, menstrual blood, the impossible weight pressing down upon her, the prick of pleasure, the sigh of release and the scent of lilacs like a nosegay masking the stench of her lover’s flesh and bone.
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responding to my own prompt
Date: 2025-03-18 02:20 pm (UTC)Her mother had a small and perfectly pruned lilac tree in a pot in the conservatory. Her mother had a talcum between her chafing thighs that smelled of flowers. She hid in the voluminous skirts until finally admonished and shamed in front of her uncle by her father and she remembered her mother’s face, the sadness. Her father was gifted at separating souls and dessicating them with a bitter tincture of loneliness.
Anna’s mouth had tasted of lilacs, but that was, of course, nonsensical. Had she ever touched the tip of her tongue to the riot of purple flowers as they dripped scent like petals? Anna had been the one to demure once she was engaged to Friedrich. And Friedrich watched her with an unblinking gaze of a snake like the one trapped behind a pane of spitty glass at the Tierpark that she swore had whispered a reptilian secret to her that day she and Anna had wandered to and fro arm in arm.
Friedrich brought his friend, Thomas, into her world. Her world was a cramped and contained thing, she a living corpse inside a satin lined coffin. Thomas ripped off the lid and insisted she step out and join him in spaces so wide and open and full of fresh air that when she was with him her heart soared like a bird and the sun darkened her skin and warmed her blood and she smelled nothing more than salted ocean air and long-grassed meadows and trees that bloomed with pink tulips.
That world was akin to the worlds one visits in a dream. Somehow, Thomas had made the dreaming world a waking one and her nightmares returned whenever she slept, dreams were for the days, nights were for the hauntings. Tortured flesh, piercing teeth, menstrual blood, the impossible weight pressing down upon her, the prick of pleasure, the sigh of release and the scent of lilacs like a nosegay masking the stench of her lover’s flesh and bone.