Broken Infinites: China Birds, A Picture Story
- blueshiftjournal
- Jan 18, 2015
- 2 min read
Broken Infinities is a bi-weekly experimentation of form in all its versatility. With future posts ranging from stories told entirely through Hallmark cards, bucket lists, and/or the various contents of garbage cans, this blog segment is dedicated to twisting matrices, sticking salt and sugar together in empty space, and anything and everything in between. Here is Katherine Du's third post in this segment:
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Source: www.etsy.com
He had bought her a pair of coral pink shoes no longer than the length of my hand stretched out in an octave. Many nights afterwards, they sat like forgotten teeth under pillows in our attic. They were in the corner next to the dress her godmother had given her, the ice blue one that would have wrapped around her like a sleeve, a sky.
She would have breathed. She would have cried into its rippling folds.
Source: www.zulily.com
I loved the dress, but I could never bring myself to go near it. I did try touching the shoes, though. I slid them between my hands like my baby girl trying to hold water for the first time, but the shoes reeked of freshness, something musty, broken. When I went back up to the attic a decade later, only one would remain.
I remember her breaking his favorite china dishes once. His mother had given them to us to make up for all the Christmases we never had. I would often catch him running his thumbs over their upturned edges the way a masseuse would earn his keep. I think he loved the glazed birds that kissed their surfaces, the bluebirds, the robins with their faces turned to the sky. They hung there, shivering with a sort of stuck, glass-faced life.
Source: www.thehaystackneedleonline.com
When she broke the dishes, she squealed and clutched their jagged remains. A bird beak dug into her pinkie finger, a rivulet of hot red liquid oozing along the creases of her dime-sized palm. Her scream trembled in the air, a half-sung note. Her eyes grabbed mine, and in that moment I loved her. I loved the memory of her.
