Soliloquies Anthology 30.1

By Olivia Major-Murphy

Stars

Lucy and I became friends when we were sixteen. We met in the school choir. I knew there was something singular about her. She had crooked bottom teeth and black, silken hair. I stood next to her in the choir and listened to her. Her voice was soft and lilting; it was tender, sweet and high. Like a flower opening. It made me want to weep. 

I started going to her house after school. We went into a closet cupboard at the top of the stairs and kissed each other. There was a little door we had to crawl through. The room feels imaginary to me now, like a place I would dream of. It was narrow and painted yellow with glow-in-the-dark stars stuck with glue putty to the ceiling, which I counted while she kissed along my ribs, my hips. One night we were in the little room and I felt the walls all get closer, the ceiling a little lower. She was kissing me and I started to hate the way it felt. Each time her mouth pressed against my body and pulled away, my skin felt like paper being singed. I remember feeling sick to my stomach because it was so hot in that room. I told her stop and she did. She brought her face up to mine and looked at me with tears in her eyes that made her eyelashes wet and dark and stuck together. I wanted our eyes to be closed; I wanted us to hold each other in the dark, breathing together gently, without any light glowing beyond our eyelids. I knew that would be the last time. Afterwards I had little red crescents all over my abdomen, like someone had been pinching me.