dig

Contains quotes from e.e. cummings, because I'm a big geek.

Miriam
by Hetre Z

Anyone lived in a pretty how town.

Miriam was fluffy and soft, a little pillow in the garden, and she lived in a raspberry-brick stucco house on the corner of the street. The sun always shined there.

There were carpets on the floor, never as soft as her but something she could sink her toes into. The kitchen was all cedar wood, painted bright greens and reds and yellows, with a little blue like the ocean far away.

There were glass cups in the cupboards, the colors in them winding through, suffused. Windchime-heartbreak colors, colors you’d want to marry if you didn’t already own them. She always drank water, anything clear to ping off the little bits of glass, in glass.

The bedroom was small, not as soft as her but getting there. She’d add curtains when she remembered. Nightstand, closet, light coming through the window, sun like lemonade splashing. Anyone lived.

Miriam didn’t know she wasn’t anybody. She was soft; she was velvet, like skin and princess-line dresses.

The name was the deal-breaker, she always thought. Because anyone can have a name like “Miriam”, but only the very special ones made it work, made it soft and fluffy, squeaky like a cat toy and sexy like a sailor dress. Miriam made everything work.

The sun shined, through the windows, through the glass and made colors sparkle on the wall.

She worked sometimes, in cold-dark places, office buildings with no light. They were always far away from her house. She liked making enough money to buy roses to plant and glasses to drink water out of. Everyone recognized her when she worked. People even came over sometimes.

Cotton candy. Watermelon. Silk, satin, plush soft. Miriam lived in adjectives and nouns, sunlight giving her days the verbs. She wondered sometimes if she lived in California. The house was bright enough, if nothing else.

Down they forgot as up they grew.

She lived on a street where the sun was always shining. Everything glowed, even her. And her skin smelled like lemon soap though it didn’t taste like it, and her hair spiraled out of the little clips she always wore.

Miriam didn’t wait, she just was. When she met eyes across a room, she liked them to be brighter than her bits of colored glass in glass. When she took them home, she liked them to treat her nice, run fingers up her spine and feel how soft she was. It happened often enough that she could be happy.

She tried not to mind when they ripped the velvet a little.

She also liked being alone, looking at the colors in her house, being lush rainforest slowgrowth, and the muggy air, and sparkles of water from a fountain.

Miriam was soft and slow, like molasses, and she sang the songs her own way. She bloomed like flowers, and her face was the sweetest thing.