EPTThe Girl in the Yellow Dress
You are perfect.
Perfect, lying there, covered in shards of glass, refracting, sanguine, over your perfect body, sparkling on your pale, death white skin.
Your poor dress.
Your poor beautiful dress. It’s ruined, isn’t it? You played in the dirt, you played in the rivers of blood, and it’s all stained. All stained with ruin, all caked with desolation. A golden sun hue, broken by cut after cut into your skin, spindling red, shining with glass. Your poor dress.
You were perfect. You were more and more perfect as I drew nearer and nearer to you, to touch you, lightly, else my skin would burn with your iridescent glory.
But then, you were too perfect. Too close. Too late. Yellow stained teeth, contaminating breath after breath with lies. Eyes, shining in perfect green, too chemical. Too dead, underneath the plastic of your face.
You were perfect. Now, you’re ruined, aren’t you? Broken by rape, by heartbreak, by torture scene after torture scene. Broken mind, broken heart, broken teeth. Your hair, your rich, brown, flowing hair, broken and knotted, all wrong, all muddy and wrong. All imperfect.
Harlequin. Standing, dancing, dancing on the street corner, as cars flash by in the middle of the night rush. Broken people in broken cars. All perfect for you. And you for them.
Fishnets on, come on girls, fishnets on, lipstick smeared, hair tousled. Time to put on a show. Time to dance.
Underwear inside out, come on girls, mascara running, bra missing, shoes broken at the heel. They were perfect. You were perfect. Then you grew up. But you never grew up.
Whatever happened to that beautiful dress? That poor dress. Your poor dress. No hope of repair? Sunflowers, crushed into it? I remember it. It was a pretty dress. You looked very pretty in it. What time is it? Three in the morning? Is that liquor on your breath? What have you got on? Have you no shame?
You were a perfect daughter. Now you have no parents. They’re broken, broken and beaten by some dictator in a country you didn’t know existed. Tortured and beaten, and fed to the dogs, chunk by chunk, piece by piece. You loved the flopping sound of their bloody flesh, hitting the ground. You loved the masochistic tussle of supremacy, biting for the jugular. Some sick display of violence. One man’s trash.
You loved treasure.
Remember how I used to kiss you? Badly, as I recall. You, in your yellow dress, living down my street, meeting me as a little kid, running around the backyard. Don’t trip. Don’t walk on my grave. I’m with Jesus.
I’m with Jesus. I’m with stupid. Jesus is broken. He is perfect. He was perfect, looking in the mirror. He was perfect. And then he was born. And then he died. And then he died for my sins.
My sins were perfect. He didn’t have to die for them. He didn’t have to live for them.
I feel guilt that I didn’t do anything, as you became Jesus. As you descended into thinking you should die for my sins. I wanted to die for your sins. Your sins made me feel special, made me feel needed, when I could hold you, and feel you, and run my hands along your hair, and dance with you in the dark.
Always that glowing yellow dress. Piercing the night in my soul, as we twirled. The sun. The sun was perfect.
The sun is destroyed now. Her children, they live in an orphanage. Sometimes they visit her grave, up on the hill, grass stubbornly dying in some long dramatic scene, blue skies too blue. Too perfect.
And they just stand there, these children. Some of them cry. The bigger ones hold onto the little ones. The littlest one is too young to understand why his mother was too perfect to feel pain. Too imperfect to feel the shot ring out through her ears, and feel the bullet ring out through her brain.
You were the sun. But now you’re the littlest girl in the world, and you’re twirling until you get dizzy. Until you fall on the ground, the green ground, and look up at the sky, just like we used to.
But I’m not there. And you’re not. Not really. You’re somewhere else, just like me. Just like I was, when I was perfect.
I identified the body. I went in on that Wednesday morning, a little shocked, face grim and determined, into the morgue, into that crypt of real person after real person. Everyone is real after they die. Nobody exists in real life.
I walked through that pristine shit-hole, walls bleached to perfection. Too perfect.
Cracks in the mirror. Your judgement is too hard.
I met the doctor, some fucker with a tie with patterns on it. Lab coated, bristle haired. Too perfect.
Cracks in the windshield. The rain is too hard.
I walked into the depository, and I watched as the sheet was pulled back. You didn’t have to watch. You couldn’t watch. You said you felt sick.
I looked at you, and saw your bloody face.
Cracks in her head. The blood is too hard.
I looked at you, searching for recognition in those lifeless eyes. I feel sick, I feel sick. Vomiting, changing your mind. Your baby was due to arrive yesterday. You arrived somewhere else. We would’ve named her Sophie. I always liked that name. She would’ve worn a yellow dress, gone to school in a yellow dress, played with her friends in a yellow dress.
Gotten drunk in a yellow dress. Smoked for the first time in a yellow dress. Lost her virginity in a yellow dress.
Cracks in her body. The bones aren’t hard enough.
I saw something that was there, but then it wasn’t. But then it was again. I always saw it. You never saw it, until it was too late.
It was a tree, and you never saw it, until it was too late. Until your eyes couldn’t even see what was staring at you in the face.
Let me be the one who stood in front of your car, stood in front of it as it raced towards nirvana at one hundred and forty kilometres an hour, raising my hands, shouting out stop.
Let me have been the one who died for your sins. Your pathetic little sins. Your perfect little vices.
Let me have been the tree, as you hit it, as the steam poured from your once perfect, now broken engine, and as you flew gracefully through the windshield.
Let me have been the artist who carefully traced your blood into spiralling messages of how much you loved me, and how much you’d miss all of us children, as it fell down the glass, and collided with heavy rain drops.
Let me have been Jesus. Imperfect Jesus. Let me have cared too much. I care too much. I don’t care enough. I don’t go to church anymore, and I don’t want to. They all wear black, waiting for Death, praising Death’s glory over us all. I saw you in black. You always wore black. I hated black. I loved you most when you wore that yellow dress.
Whatever happened to that yellow dress? Oh, that’s right. Bloodied, and crushed, and cut into millions of shreds on your now naked body, naked for all of us to see on candid camera. Why were you wearing it when you died? Harlequin.
You grew up.
Cracks in the camera lens. She didn’t fight hard enough.
You never grew up.
Cracks in her armour. She loved me too much.
