Okay is a Verb - by Erin Hortle
ISLAND | ISSUE 156
Cece wiggles her toes up and down, and then wiggles her hips, swivelling herself this way, then that. She sinks further into the aerated sand of the tideline. She bends down and picks up a small rock from beneath the lap of the shallows. It’s quite flat, so she flicks it out across the water. Really, she was trying to skim it, but she got the angle wrong and it plonks through the surface.
Her English teacher, Mrs Delaney, reminded her class that verbs are doing words. They are what the nouns do. The nouns are people, places and things. Of course, Cece didn’t need to be reminded of this, but some of the others in her class probably did. Not that they were reminded: she watched their eyes glaze as Mrs Delaney spoke – which is to say, she watched their nouns verb as they switched off.
They didn’t get it. They don’t understand that nouns and verbs aren’t just things that Mrs Delaney and every other English teacher they’ve ever had bang on about; they don’t understand that nouns are real things that do verbs in the real world; they don’t understand it the way Cece does, or the way Cece nearly does. Because, as she watches the ripples from the rock spread, she wonders: as the rock plunges to the sandy bottom, is she sinking it, or is it just sinking? And if a ship hits a rock at full force and is torn open, as the water rushes into that gash, and as the ship sinks, what’s happening? The ship doesn’t mean to do it. It doesn’t make itself do it. Something is done to it. And yet it sinks.
Sinks.
Of course, her heart doesn’t move because it’s trapped, thrumming in the bone cage of her ribs. And yet it sinks like a stone. But is it sinking, or is she sinking it? This is what she wonders. And this is the problem with school: with the way Mrs Delaney teaches them words. Because when Cece asked her about which noun is doing what when a ship hits a rock and is torn open and sinks, Mrs Delaney said, that’s an example of passive voice – of a passive verb construction. But Mrs Delaney didn’t explain which bit was passive voice and what passive voice even is, so how is Cece meant to know what happens when her heart plunges into where her belly is meant to be but really goes nowhere at all? How is Cece meant to know if she did it, or if her heart did it? In which case maybe it isn’t her fault. Maybe none of it is her fault if all she did was not say anything. Except she did say a thing. She said okay, and if she hadn’t, nothing would have happened.
“Maybe none of it is her fault if all she did was not say anything. Except she did say a thing. She said okay, and if she hadn’t, nothing would have happened.”
Cece twists, ratcheting herself down, down-down, down-down. The water is cool around her ankles, and the sand is starting to pack harder beneath her buried feet. It’s weird, looking at her legs ending in stumps. She presses them together and imagines that they are a bark-clad trunk and her feet are roots, probing for water. She is a tree-woman, and her hair is a cascade of breathing foliage. Which is a metaphor, maybe, although she’s still not one hundred per cent sure that she gets the difference between metaphors and lies. Is it just that metaphors are figurative lies, or is there something more to them? She throws her head back, so that her hair spills out behind her like a cape of vines. Which is a simile, definitely, because of the like. A simile is when something is described as being like something else, Mrs Delaney said, and a metaphor is when something is described as something else. So a simile is when the setting sun looks like a ripe peach about to fall; and a metaphor is when the setting sun is a ripe peach.
The sun brushes Cece’s open face, and her skin gobbles up the light; but the light doesn’t disappear, it keeps beaming down on her, and she beams back. If she were a mirror she’d be fierce right now. Which isn’t a metaphor or a simile but an if only.
‘Cece.’
She opens her eyes and her hair is brown again, no longer forest-green. She turns from the sky and water to the shore, the bush, the faded red roof of the school which she can just see, cresting the tree line. Then her eyes track down to the boy standing on the beach beside her shoes and backpack.
‘Hello Jack,’ she says. She gives him what she hopes is a cute little smile, and he grins back and kicks off his shoes.
She thinks she must look mysterious and sexy and just generally alluring standing here, alone, in the water.
Jack is taller than her and has a six-pack – not in a muscly way, in a skinny way, but still. He splashes to her side.
‘Whatcha doing?’ he asks, grinning down at her. He seems even taller than usual because she’s sunk. Sunk is something done, not something doing, but she’s pretty sure it’s still a verb.
‘Verbs,’ she says. ‘
You’re funny.’
She thinks he’s probably flirting with her to try to cover the fact he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. He’s not very smart, but he’s nice and one of the hottest guys in their year.
‘Pull me out?’ she says, to make him touch her.
He grabs her by the hand and yanks. The sand slurps at her feet as she pops free. He doesn’t let go of her hand, which is precisely what she hoped for.
‘Can I kiss you again?’ he asks.
‘Yeah okay,’ Cece says, shrugging. He leans down, and presses his lips against hers. His mouth is soft and squashy. His eyes are closed, so she closes hers too, and then his tongue is inside her mouth and their teeth clack against each other. She adjusts her lips a little, making a kissing shape, and prods her tongue back at his. She notices that her vag has gone warm and started to gently clench and unclench to its own rhythm, just like it did when they were kissing the other night, and she thinks to herself: my noun is verbing of its own accord, which is sort of like the stone. Her smiling and getting him to touch her hand then saying yeah okay is her throwing the stone, and then it sinks, which is outside of her control just like her vag, even though she made it happen in the first place.
“I made it happen, Cece thinks happily as she swishes her tongue about. But then she hears Gary’s voice: you slut, you little slut.”
I made it happen, Cece thinks happily as she swishes her tongue about. But then she hears Gary’s voice: you slut, you little slut. She tries to block it out, to focus on Jack’s hands, now on her lower back, but she sees Gary’s face, red with booze and gleeful, her mum passed out on the couch behind him, the lights gone out. But it wasn’t all in that order, was it? Gary’s lips are pink and meaty and so obvious, framed like that by his wiry black beard. Tiny baubles of spit adorn his whiskers like Christmas lights on a tree. Which is a simile. They quiver merrily. You slut, you little slut. Or maybe she made up the spit.
She opens her eyes so that Gary will disappear. Jack’s face is so close to hers. He has such lovely long eyelashes. She fists her fingers in his hair, which is damp with sweat because he spent last period in PE playing touch football, while she was in science learning about photosynthesis.
Jack moans softly into her mouth and trails his hand down her spine to her bum. He gives it a squeeze.
You slut.
She pulls away, and watches Jack stand there, red-faced and panting a bit. His eyes dart down to his crotch, and she looks too and sees the bulge of his boner, puffing out his shorts. He slumps his shoulders and curves his back, like he’s trying to fold himself in on it so it won’t be so obvious.
He’s a bit sheepish when he grins at her, so she grins back. But her grin is on her face, not inside her. Inside her is shame and sinking.
You slut.
‘Come on,’ she says, ‘or we’ll miss the bus.’
*
‘Hellooo!’ she calls, as she bangs through the door.
‘Cece,’ her mum mumbles. ‘Cecelia.’ The curtains are drawn and she’s lying on the couch in her trackies, even though it’s December and it’s bright and sunny outside. Which, now Cece thinks about it, is probably why the curtains are closed, because her mum is hungover as fuck.
‘Can I get you anything?’ Cece asks.
Her mum just groans.
Cece watches her for a bit, and her heart sinks again. Her mum is a wreck. Devastated. Gutted, which is a verb and maybe a metaphor. If something is gutted it means something else cut it open and ripped its stomach and intestines out. Something guts something else. Noun verbs other noun. Which means that if her mum is gutted, she has been gutted by something. Her mum believes she gutted herself, Cece thinks, and her heart doesn’t just sink, it twists. Her heart is a corkscrew and she is a bottle of wine. A cheap and nasty bottle of wine. Which is a metaphor, definitely, because she is.
“Her heart is a corkscrew and she is a bottle of wine. A cheap and nasty bottle of wine. Which is a metaphor, definitely, because she is.”
Cece walks over to the couch. ‘Mum,’ she murmurs, ‘we can just get new ones.’ ‘Don’t be silly, Cece.’ Her mum’s voice is small. For a moment, Cece thinks maybe her mum is being silly. They’re just Christmas lights. But they’re not just Christmas lights, they’re the lights of her mother’s life.
Light-of-my-life. The words fall together so neatly. What is that? A cliché, likely. Maybe her mum photosynthesised under those lights as she sat, watching them. Maybe they imbued her with Christmas cheer the way sunlight imbues plants with carbon dioxide, and then her mum breathed out spunk and sass as plants breathe out oxygen. They were the lights of her life. They were life, for her. Because most plants can’t live without sunlight, Mr Pitt, Cece’s science teacher, said.
‘Why can’t we just go to Kmart and get new ones?’ Cece presses.
‘We can’t afford new ones, okay?’ her mum sighs.
But we could afford the booze you and Gary downed these last two nights? Cece wonders.
Her mum is, actually, gutted because the lights were her intestines, and they were ripped from her body. Except they couldn’t be ripped from her body because they weren’t in her body; they were draped from the roof of the house in a chain of twinkling crescents, and wrapped around the banister of the verandah. Maybe they were ripped from her soul, because your soul is the thing that’s more than your body. Or that’s what the school pastor told them, anyway. Which would mean that it doesn’t have to be inside you.
Her mum is suffering a soul wound. Her soul has been gutted.
“They really weren’t that impressive, Cece thinks. But when she was little she thought they were magical, mystical, fantastical – all of which are adjectives that describe the lights, but they are subjective adjectives, which means they aren’t necessarily true for everyone at all points in time.”
They really weren’t that impressive, Cece thinks. But when she was little she thought they were magical, mystical, fantastical – all of which are adjectives that describe the lights, but they are subjective adjectives, which means they aren’t necessarily true for everyone at all points in time. Sometimes adjectives aren’t true for everyone because their meaning, or truth, doesn’t exist in some people’s heads. Like the time one of Cece’s primary school teachers described her as a precocious child in her report, and Cece and her mum didn’t know whether it was a compliment or an insult.
When she was little, Cece loved the lights because she wasn’t allowed them. Cece wasn’t allowed them because of daylight savings, which meant that she had to go to bed before the sun set, because Christmas is in December, and in December the days go forever because of the solstice, which is the longest day of the year or the shortest night of the year depending on your perspective. The days lengthen and shorten because of how the tilt of the earth’s axis determines a place’s position in relation to the sun. That position changes, because the earth orbits the sun. The earth orbits the sun because of the sun’s gravitational pull. The sun makes the earth do it, but it’s the earth that orbits, which is a bit like the ship hitting the rock and sinking. Sort of.
On those long evenings, her mum would shepherd Cece into her bedroom, then watch telly for a bit. Once it was dark outside she would turn the lights on and sit by herself for hours and hours on the mildewy couch on the verandah, protecting the lights from would-be thieves. On Friday and Saturday nights, Cece was allowed to stay up until she turned them on, but no later.
Once, Cece woke up because of all the different lights and the shouting and the sirens. Someone had dumped a stolen car two doors down and then torched it, and then the police and the fire brigade arrived. Cece snuck out onto the verandah to watch. Her mum was sitting on the couch, her lights glimmering around her. She was a fairy queen and Cece was a cheeky pixie to be out of bed in the middle of the night.
‘This is why I have to guard them, Cece,’ her mum said, quietly. ‘We live in a piece-of-shit neighbourhood.’
Cece already knew that, because the kids at school called her a bogan. The Smart Bogan. That was what Cece was and it confused everyone, especially her mum.
“Cece already knew that, because the kids at school called her a bogan. The Smart Bogan. That was what Cece was and it confused everyone, especially her mum.”
‘How did you get so smart?’ her mum sometimes asked her, genuinely perplexed. Sometimes she sounded proud, other times she sounded accusatory, which made Cece feel like she might have done something wrong. But mostly Cece’s mum was proud.
‘Dunno,’ Cece would say. And then, later, once she’d figured it out: ‘I just remember stuff real easy.’ Which meant that she didn’t have to practise stuff to know it, like the other kids in her class did.
‘You could be anything in the world, Cece,’ her mother said when Cece was nine. ‘You could be a doctor or a lawyer or a pilot.’ She was tucking Cece into bed, dressed in her Woolies uniform, about to go in for a late shift stacking the shelves. She started doing it once a week when Cece was eight because the money was better if you worked after hours. She always felt bad on those nights because she had to leave Cece home alone, but it meant that Cece always got really good long tuck-ins so she didn’t mind too much.
‘You can’t waste it, Cece,’ her mum said. ‘Don’t make the mistake I made. Don’t let some boy knock you up. Don’t even go near boys. They’ll distract you and it will ruin everything.’
Around that time, Cece and her mum started their Saturday routine, which lasted until Cece was twelve and didn’t want to hang out with her mum on weekends anymore. Cece’s mum would work the really early shift, and then she would take Cece to the library, and Cece would pick out a book while her mum waited, tapping her foot and hissing at Cece to hurry up. Once they got home Cece and her mum would read the book together, sounding out the words they didn’t know and sometimes looking up the meanings in the dictionary Cece’s mum had brought home one day, as a present-for-no-reason.
Soon after they finished reading Watership Down, Cece’s mum got a job as a receptionist which meant she didn’t have to work nights anymore, but Cece was too old for long tuck-ins anyway. And then in what seemed like no time at all, Cece grew breasts and got hot – or at least that was what everyone else said; Cece wouldn’t say that about herself, obviously – and a boy like Jack decided he wanted to kiss her and touch her and she decided that that was something she wanted too, which is why it’s all Cece’s fault – the reason her mum lies gutted on the couch, that is.
Her mum loved her lights so, so much. They were her thing. Her only thing. The only thing that was only hers.
‘Couldn’t we just ... tighten our belts for a few weeks?’ Cece asks.
Her mum peers at her through the gloom, and says, like she thinks Cece’s stupid, ‘You can’t tighten your belt at Christmas time, Cece.’
‘Well what about after Christmas?’ Cece suggests.
‘After Christmas will be too late. There’s no point in Christmas lights after Christmas.’
‘They’re just lights, Kris,’ Gary says and Cece starts. He’s standing in the doorway. How long has he been there, watching them?
‘They were my lights,’ her mum says. ‘They were my tradition. You wouldn’t understand.’
No, Gary wouldn’t understand, Cece thinks. He’s new. He wasn’t here last Christmas, or any Christmas before that to see what the lights did to her mum. He doesn’t know that the lights were little twinkling fairy godmothers. He doesn’t know that when Cece’s mum sat under them she became a fucking queen because they gilded her throne. They weren’t intestines, they were crown jewels, and Gary doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know anything.
“He doesn’t know that when Cece’s mum sat under them she became a fucking queen because they gilded her throne. They weren’t intestines, they were crown jewels, and Gary doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know anything.”
Gary’s eyes slide to Cece’s and his gaze hisses, If you tell, I’ll tell.
Meanwhile, Cece’s mum groans: ‘They were my lights and I fucked them and it’s Christmas.’
‘I know, love,’ Gary says. He glances at Cece. You slut, his eyes say. ‘You didn’t mean to, Kris. You were drunk,’ he says, as he strokes her mum’s hair.
Cece wants to claw his lips off and shove them up his arse.
‘I was just so excited,’ Cece’s mum sighs. Which is true. She was – had been – so excited, as she always was on that first day of December. She’d put her music on and popped a bottle of champers and laughed and swung her hips, dancing, as she strung the lights up.
‘Bootylicious, Mum!’ Cece catcalled, and her mum did a slut-drop, and then threw her head back and grinned at the sky and ran her hands down her body all sexy-like as she swayed. Gary sat and watched with his legs spread too wide. He was on the couch and Cece’s mum backed up to him, bouncing her bum in time with the music, inching towards his lap.
Cece buggered off. She’d seen enough. She’d seen it before. She was going to Jack’s house, and she didn’t know it then, but Jack was going to kiss her, like, properly. She didn’t know it then, but he was going to ask her if she wouldn’t mind if he did, just like they taught in sex ed at school, because consent is always the first step in any sexual encounter, Mr Jennings, their teacher, said, and Cece didn’t know it then, but Jack wanted to encounter her sexually.
These are the things that happened in that encounter: he asked for her consent, and she told him okay, so he kissed her on the cheek, and then on the lips, and then he tongued her, like, properly. Which means that her word made it happen as much as his words and mouth did, because without her word nothing would have happened and maybe her heart would be okay – which is ironic because that’s the word that started it all in the first place.
Okay is a verb: it does stuff.
Gary is still stroking her mum’s hair. He’s touching her like he owns her, glaring at Cece like she’s dirt.
You slut.
If her mum is the ship torn open, then Gary is the rock and Cece’s heart sinks.
She glares right back at Gary and storms into the kitchen. Storms: verb, noun, metaphor, force of nature. Too damn right she’s a force of nature. She’s like gravity, or photosynthesis. Which is a simile. She will fuck Gary up.
“She glares right back at Gary and storms into the kitchen. Storms: verb, noun, metaphor, force of nature. Too damn right she’s a force of nature. She’s like gravity, or photosynthesis. Which is a simile. She will fuck Gary up.”
You slut.
Except she won’t.
Gary follows her into the kitchen and smirks at her, because he saw what happened. She saw what happened, too. She saw it over Jack’s shoulder. Except that’s not right, is it? Because Jack had fled by then. Anyway, she saw, which means they should be even, but her heart sinks and twists and pulls at her face so that she can’t smirk back.
*
This is what happened:
Cece and Jack got drunk on the Bundy she swiped from the benchtop at home before she buggered off, and then he asked her consent for a kiss and she said okay. His parents were going to be home around ten, so she and Jack caught the bus back to her house and she could tell that for him it was an adventure. It only takes twelve minutes on the bus (up the highway and over the hill) but her house exists in a whole other world. Maybe the tilt of the hill means her neighbourhood has a different position in relation to the sun and its gravitational pull. Maybe that’s why you can’t photosynthesise quite so well on her side of the hill, which is why the houses are smaller and shabbier. Because humans grow houses with their hands and you need sunlight to grow things.
“Maybe that’s why you can’t photosynthesise quite so well on her side of the hill, which is why the houses are smaller and shabbier. Because humans grow houses with their hands and you need sunlight to grow things.”
‘I would get into so much trouble if my parents knew where I was going,’ Jack whispered into her ear as the bus seat juddered beneath them, and she wondered if he knew what he was really telling her. But then his tongue followed his words and she got distracted.
They got off the bus, and Jack became bold. Cece didn’t mind because she was too busy whispering fuck-knows-what and giggling and skipping just out of his fumbling reach. When they got to Cece’s house they paused in the shadow of the hedge, inside the gate. The lights in the house were off, but her mum’s lights were on and her mum was Sleeping Beauty. She was passed out on the couch with her mouth open and a half-empty stubbie propped in her lap, and the world sparkled and glittered around her.
Cece heard Jack snort a laugh from where he stood behind her and she hated him for a moment. But then he moved her hair out of the way and put his mouth on the side of her neck and wrapped his arms around her so that his left hand could squeeze her right breast and his right hand could squeeze her left breast. He didn’t ask for her consent this time, so Cece wondered if her earlier okay wasn’t used up yet. His hands squeezing at her breasts weren’t rough and his tongue and teeth on her neck were making her shudder in what was probably pleasure because her vag started doing stuff. She turned around and kissed him hard and put her hands around his neck and kind of hung off him, which made him take her weight and lie her down on her back in the shadows, which was precisely what she intended him to do, but she didn’t really know why except that’s what she wanted.
Jack lay on top of her and kissed her mouth and pressed and rubbed his boner against her. Then he propped himself up so that he could yank her tank top down and ease one of her breasts out of her bra and suck on her nipple while he humped at her. Cece heard herself moan like an actress in a movie sex scene, which caught her by surprise, but then she wondered if she’d done it a little bit on purpose. Next thing, her other nipple was in his mouth and one of his hands was in her pants and he kind of began poking her vag with his finger, over and over, in-out, in-out, which wasn’t that bad but wasn’t that good.
Cece wondered if this was what boys thought fingering was, in which case, she wondered, if this was what fingering is, because fingering is a verb and boys are the nouns that do it. Boys and lesbians are the nouns, that is, but lesbians have their own vages and so, presumably, would know how to finger ... better. In which case, Jack wasn’t necessarily doing it right; this wasn’t what fingering had to be; it could be something else. She wondered if she should tell him that, but then she thought that if she explained how to finger better, then he might follow her instructions, and she didn’t know if she was ready for that kind of step because this was the first time they’d even kissed – the first time she’d even kissed a boy ever – and what kind of slut teaches a boy how to make her come the first time they kiss? Anyway, her mum was like, just there; and her mum would be so disappointed to see Cece near a boy and wasting it and ruining everything.
Cece gazed over Jack’s shoulder to where her mum sat slumped, flickering beneath her lights, and there was Gary.
Gary was standing on the verandah, watching her and Jack, leering with his pink sausage lips.
Cece wrenched Jack’s hand out of her pants and pushed him off her.
‘You’d better go,’ she murmured, tucking her breasts away. He followed her gaze over his shoulder, saw Gary, sprang to his feet and bolted.
Cece got to her feet, and straightened her clothes. Gary still hadn’t moved, hadn’t said anything. She wasn’t sure if she should walk towards him – if she should walk up the steps and right past him, into the house and to bed. She kind of didn’t want to at all. The way he was looking at her was weird – creepy weird.
And then he took a step towards her.
One drunken step. That was all it took for his foot to get caught in the lights, and for him to trip and tumble down the stairs, ripping the lights from the bannister like a fish ripping line from a rod. The lights went out as Gary landed in a jumbled-up lump at the bottom of the steps.
Her mother didn’t flinch, didn’t move a muscle.
Gary groaned and Cece ran for it, past him and up onto the verandah.
She stopped, and looked down at him.
He looked up at her: red-faced with booze; gleeful, angry and hateful all at once.
‘You slut,’ he spat. ‘You little slut.’
Cece dashed into her bedroom, slammed the door, and shoved her chest of drawers in front of it, just in case.
Just in case of what?
Her throat sobbed and gasped. She didn’t sob and gasp it; fear sobbed and gasped it.
The next morning, her mum woke up, and so Cece was safe. But her mum was distraught. The lights were all over the place, and when she flicked the switch: nothing. They didn’t work anymore.
“The next morning, her mum woke up, and so Cece was safe. But her mum was distraught. The lights were all over the place, and when she flicked the switch: nothing. They didn’t work anymore.”
‘Don’t you remember what happened?’ Gary asked.
Her mum peered at him through bleary, hungover eyes.
‘You got your foot caught in them and tripped,’ Gary said.
Cece gaped at him.
His eyes bored into hers. His eyes stuffed words into her head. If you tell, I’ll tell. Slut.
So Cece didn’t tell and her heart sank because her mum thought that she had gutted herself but Gary was the rock that did it. Then Gary decided he would help her mum take the edge off the grief by getting on the piss with her, and they got blind, and Cece locked herself in her room again and texted Jack all night. He asked if she was okay and she told him yes, even though she wasn’t sure. And he told her that he really likes her, which is good because she really likes him too, but that didn’t stop her heart plunging like a stone to the sandy bottom.
The next day she went to school, and she and Jack kissed at the beach. Then she got home and saw that her mum hadn’t gone to work because she was broken, bereft and hungover as all fuck again, and so Cece walked into the kitchen and Gary followed her and there stood there, smirking at her like the creep he was.
*
‘She’ll get over it,’ he says.
Cece wonders if his heart is sinking too. She wonders if he cares and what he cares and does he even love her mum?
‘Don’t you feel bad?’ she asks.
His face contorts and his lips become more noticeable than ever. ‘They’re just fucking lights,’ they spit. And there – there are the glistening baubles on his black whiskers.
But Cece’s mum is standing in the doorway behind him.
‘How many times do I have to fucking tell you,’ she hisses. ‘They’re not just lights,’ she says. ‘They were my lights, and I fucked them,’ she sighs, despondent, and Cece can’t bear it.
‘It wasn’t you, Mum.’ Cece’s voice is not her own. It’s shrill and fierce. It beams out of her. ‘He’s been lying to you. He did it. Gary fucked your lights.’
‘Yeah well,’ he splutters. ‘She was fucking a boy in the front yard like a ... like a little slut.’
And there the words are. But they aren’t what she was expecting. They’re like deflated balloons, damp with spit. Which is a simile. They have no bite. They don’t bite. They don’t verb. They do nothing.
“And there the words are. But they aren’t what she was expecting. They’re like deflated balloons, damp with spit. Which is a simile. They have no bite. They don’t bite. They don’t verb. They do nothing. ”
‘I wasn’t fucking a boy, Mum,’ Cece explains, and she sounds so reasonable. ‘We were just kissing.’ No need to mention the sub-par fingering. ‘I think ... I think I have a boyfriend.’ Because that’s what Jack is, isn’t he?
‘A boyfriend?’ Cece’s mum asks. A smile ghosts her lips and she raises one eyebrow.
Cece always wishes she’d inherited the ability to do that: to say things with her eyebrow. Because her mum’s eyebrow does say things and do things: it does verbs to nouns, like ignores Gary, and sparkles at Cece. Sparkles, which isn’t really a metaphor but is something more than a verb.
Cece’s heart swells.
Her mum’s eyebrow swells her heart.
‘I saw her,’ Gary insists. He sounds like a petulant child.
But Cece is a precocious child and, lights or no lights, her mum is a fucking queen. ▼
This story appeared in Island 156 in 2019. Order a print issue here.
If you liked this piece, please share it. And please consider donating or subscribing so that we can keep supporting writers and artists.