The young girl felt strangely serene with Hayden in the room. His tangled wad of greasy hair, his tight pants tattered at the knee, and the sour-weed-stench he dragged around like a long-lost friend all exuded a tragic helplessness that made her heart flutter. Dreadfully, Hayden much more preferred Hayley Banks. As the young girl sometimes loved to convince herself, Hayley’s perky, orange hair was so bright that it made her eyes ache. Unfortunately, the young girl could not grumble about any other of Hayley’s physical features without exposing her darkly swelling envy. For example, Hayley’s eyes were absolutely beautiful and glowed green like peeled kiwis. And Hayley always sported the pouty, doubty expression that made boys’ hearts spin like tops (the young girl once overhead them purring about Hayley‘s “innocent confusion”). Furthermore, when Hayley’s lips quivered it supposedly looked sexy. Whenever the young girl’s lips quivered it was due to one of her many irrational fears or her worsening anxiety or something painfully pathetic!
Though the young girl recognized each and every one of Hayden’s foul attributes, she couldn't wriggle out of her love for him. This love bulged and swelled, tripling in size every time he limped into class like an injured animal. That was what she saw him as(!): the battered, bruised and bent animal starved of a little TLC. Immediately, the young girl remembered her parents and wondered whether her dangerous desire was a genetic trait passed down from her mother. After all, her father--a stubby, hairless creature--lacked any strengths other than his ability to fix the living room coffee table. That, however, was only after he broke it, so perhaps it didn’t even count. According to wedding pictures, Trang’s mother was once a slender, shapely specimen with grapefruit breasts and eyes that shone like the full moon.

An Evening of Change.

The evening perplexed the young girl, who teetered on the edge of her seat the entire night--her eyes wide with innocent fascination at the colorful lights skipping from one wall to another, and at the ancient Persian women denying their true ages with lipstick four shades too bright, high-heeled shoes and body-squeezing leggings. The young girl spied the oldest woman blow the musician a kiss, her wrinkled hand outstretched, her blindingly pink lips pursed in a pathetic pucker. The night continued on with a stern look from the teenage waiter. The young girl interpreted it as a poor attempt (on his part) to appear strict yet seductive. It was the “I mean business” look flung so readily at young, pretty girls who frequented the restaurant as often as the cook frequented the gym--this number being so small that it would prove a waste of both time and ink to discuss it. The night ended, in a flurry of wet kisses, tender handshakes and genuine promises to meet in the future, perhaps at the same restaurant…The young girl stepped outside, an indescribable fire inside her heart suddenly ignited while a greedy need for male attention hummed within her. She strode forward into the light, so that her new-found confidence became brilliantly illuminated, and one young male passerby could not help but notice.

Before Forever.

The young girl felt hesitant--she could or she could not, her two options shone clearer than the crystal chandelier blinking overhead. She decided upon the former choice, just as a quote expressing the stomach-twisting discomfort of regret snapped awake in her head. The young girl could see Peter, positioned near the punch, discreetly attempting to ease the itch in his left foot with the toe of his right. She smiled to herself, for he entertained her: here was this man who craved appearing suave and slick, yet who could not even scratch his own toe without looking clumsy. Nevertheless, he looked handsome, as always before. Although secretly, the young girl hoped that Peter's excessive party-going would one day get to him. Perhaps he’d awake, late one afternoon in mid-July, the unexpected sting of sunlight sharpening the pain in his left eye, and miserably discover that his black hairs had all turned gray, that his skin had worked with gravity to droop around the delicate nape of his neck, and that his eyes had transformed into a listless blue. At the same time that she hoped such a tragic episode take place, the young girl also wished against it, primarily because she loved his looks and the memories they reintroduced.

Time was running short, the party crowd already thinning while the smooth silver platters, once colored by stuffed squid, jiggling gelatin and puff pastries, offered nothing but a diverse array of crumbs--the evidence of mindless nibbling strewn for everyone to observe. The young girl shuddered with the thought of leaving without muttering even a single word to the gentleman who apparently had, during the thick mulch of her miserable musings, disappeared! Her heart hiccupped. She couldn’t quite believe herself, her one chance had vanished like the appetizers! Helplessly, the young girl scanned the staircase, longing to spot Peter’s lithe, delicate form, yearning to watch him transfixed by the beaming cluster of Picasso paintings, or by the marble Henry Moore sculpture…Suddenly, the young girl received a painful jab in her right shoulder. At that moment, her simmering feelings of sadness and regret swirled with frustration and anger. Furious, she swiveled around, her mind violently piecing together the most bitter of reprimands, when she realized, deliciously, that it was him.

Nothing Lasts.

I remember limping up to your apartment four years after I’d last seen you. In that time, your mother died in a freeway accident. They found a wet-nosed bunny cradling her skull outside of Yazd. Your apartment building was the color of blended chicken heads before they are fed to the cats. It was a pale pink, so pale that it intersected with gray and I could not bear to think of you, colorful like the opalescent moon, inhabiting a cockroach-infested building, with smells like the rotting sea. The elevator reeked of sweat, its walls sticky and the entire building tasted humid. I felt my many layers of clothing stick to my back and to my chest. It was an oily-dirty feeling that I could only shake off when I saw you, grinning faintly as you opened the door. I missed you so much! How many years had it been again? I paused a moment to remember.

The Showroom

The showroom was so hot that the editors and the buyers and the ex-supermodels soon slumped over in their chairs, like silly putty that starts out stiff then softens over time to show what it really is. And so their crisp layers peeled away, their make-up skidded down their oily cheeks and streamed down their shiny foreheads. Their flat hair curled at the edges and at the top. Soon they turned into what they long attempted to conceal behind expensive makeup and luxurious clothing and leather boots that zipped up to their knees. Finally, the models emerged, each one more pale and more wiry than the last. They marched to the murmuring of a thousand flapping paper fans.

The models wore simple black dresses that appeared too small and too large at the same time, swallowing their perfect, painted toes and obscuring their shiny stilettos. The show was very dramatic. I choked on its suffocating silence, I choked while studying the slow, reverse transformation of one thousand beautiful people. I observed them revert back into their natural states, how gently yet how surreptitiously the heat folded away their smiles and placed them on the floor, near five thousand dollar handbags and two thousand dollar clutches. How quickly the men wore their tight lips and the women their lopsided expressions.

Separation Sturdier than Brick

I remember you. Desolate and dark, swinging supple, golden girls into the warm air while crying inwardly. Sometimes I regret letting you go, regret rejecting the mere thought of you until it broke apart and dissolved. On nights such as these, when the wind plays a sweet melody with the tree’s heart-shaped leaves, I am reminded of you. The memories flicker for seconds at a time, their duration short and severe. Though it is still enough to whisper open my wounds and will the sand-paper scars to reappear.









image by laila riazi

The wind carried many mouth-watering smells: boiling cow fat, sweet pomegranate seeds, ripe and bulbous figs, crunchy, grease-drenched tadik, and slabs of salty tachin. Reshaleh stood outside of the kitchen, her wet hair dripping into the pebbles below. She could hear the kettle's soft whimpering and Belghez's shuffling across the floor. The cook, shaped like the full-bottomed eggplants she often used to flavor her dishes, turned around with Reshaleh's entrance. Belghez's smile stretched her face, specifically her nose, so for a moment it resembled a ripe pear crowned with a single prick of sweat.

The kitchen itself was admittedly plain. The counters were sturdy and gray and only one shade lighter than the walls, which bore the usual expressions of old age, most notable were the large smatterings of soot. Therefore, decorations were instead provided by the sights and smells of many different foods sizzling, brewing, or simmering to life in several pots and pans. In the farthest left corner rested a dozen figs, which had been plucked at the peak of ripeness, so that their dark purple flesh smelled sweeter than the sweetest cherry jam. Only inches away from the figs glowed a watermelon nearly three feet long and four feet wide, while that night's dinner, of saffron dusted rice, simmered into completion. Reshaleh liked to think that by standing in the middle of the kitchen every aroma would perfume her hair and flavor her skin.

"Would you like a taste?"

Belghez pinched a fig by its stem before Reshaleh could reply, and placed it into the young girl's palm, where it rested a moment before she drew it into her mouth. Everything but the delicate seeds dissolved. Reshaleh crunched a moment on the seeds, some of which found themselves wedged between her teeth, so that Belghez began to laugh. Her chuckles shook her heavy breasts and rattled her plump thighs before fading like the curls of silver smoke escaping from a nearby pan.

image by laila riazi