Dear AnyOneGirl… by Amy Fraser

Dear Alice,

I’ve been warm for so long, I’d forgotten what it was like to be cold.

It came hard and fast, a burst dam in the night. Icy water shot through my veins, my
pulpy heart froze solid. My spine curved into metal, the skin of my eyes tightened
in their sockets, needles sprouted through my skin. It hollowed out my ears and
bones until all that was left was a dry echo and a nightmare thrashing in my stomach.

I got through on the phone and her voice caught on a nail, ripping in her chest. My
name came out in chunks. A thick rope wound inside my throat. The line got cut off; I
was left swinging, choking, on the other side of the world.

For the rest of the day the air shifted around me in chalky white blocks, the sun
a grubby thumbprint in the sky. My limbs coiled like spat out gristle. We walked
through the grey swarm, jagged noise hitting me in the face. When we found a bench
and sat, I sank into him.

I thought about knocking on her door with a bunch of flowers stinging with colour,
my fist splitting open and my body uncurling into hers, the sun spilling out of my
mouth as I kissed her. I would make her warm again. We would sit in my white room
made of feathers with the fan slicing air thickly above us.

I would suck all the stones from her body with a straw, they would shatter when I spat
them out, I would do this for days until her body began to rise. I would make her light
again. I would paint ships on every one of her scars so they would sail away and I
would melt into a sea, circling her like an island so nothing could ever hurt her again.

Later that night I stood long and heavy in the shower, letting the heat drum red into
my body. My skin bloomed with roses. I cut myself shaving, and as I watched the
water run pink like a raining sunset, I thought about how pain and happiness are as
fast and familiar as the weather, coming and going like the other never existed before
it.

Love,

Amy

Written by Amy Fraser