A girl sits home alone

From dawn to dusk a girl sits home alone.

Photograph by Artur Aldyrkhanov

“A toast to lonely souls
Who never could take control of life
And all the missing we love
I hope the darkness they fight
Will give them light”

— Mary E. McGlynn, Hell Frozen Rain

From dawn to dusk a girl sits home alone. From dusk to dawn the girl writes stories. She scribbles disjointed, distant images of her mind, dreamed up in a blink of an eye, in a beat of her heart.

The girl dreams up a female silhouette, all covered in black mass thicker than blood, darker than the abyss. The woman ascends from a nearby river, the mass dripping but never dripping out. She blends with the night; only her eyes flash neon yellow.

The girl dreams up a man with three heads of different ages. She calls them the young, the older, and the elder. The three-headed man works in the laundromat downstairs, greeting visitors in riddles or proverbs of stranded times, of times unseen. Of a time that was once now.

“The clock does tick and tock—still it is all the same.”
“What was earthed emerges; what emerges gets earthed.”
“Do not go poking into the future, you may not find then.”

The girl dreams up a soot-black cat with emerald eyes. The cat purrs in poetry. Someway she understands; albeit each line is more sophisticated than all the words she knows. She hears it like a song:

“Little girl, little girl—
why are you all alone?
Little girl, little girl…
maybe you’re a clo(w)n(e).”

The girl dreams up a gold-speckled hand mirror. In the day it reflects only what it sees. At night it shines a doorway to the most enchanting garden. Where wheat tresses sway in melodies and hummingbirds paint the sky with their plumage. Where and when happiness is always there and always now.  

*

One restless night, like any other, the girl goes to the kitchen for a cup of milk before dreaming up more of all that is in her mind’s eye. The whole of the moon shimmers through the only window onto the family room, shadow and light playing tricks with the girl’s head.

But these are no tricks; the dripping woman, the man with three heads, and the sooty cat sit waiting for her arrival, the golden mirror resting front and center on the coffee table. Before the girl could even mouth a startled oh, the cat mews poetic.  

“Only lonely little girl,
we feel your pain so deep.
Join us in the happy garden
where the hours sleep.”

The dark watery woman hisses in turn, “The mirror shows a way out now with a way back in. You will not find it in the day.”

“In the garden of marvel and delight, the seconds still for you to savor, while the world moves on forward. Only a bell toll brings you back,” the three heads chorus.

“Listen carefully, little one,” the heads continue gravely. “When the bell tolls once, you have time to leave home. When the bell tolls twice, you can still rush back. When the bell tolls thrice, you are already lost, oh poor dear.”

*

In the most enchanting garden, the girl and her three new friends have a tea party on a stripy picnic blanket. They share lemon balm and finger sandwiches. They share laughter and forget.

The seconds do still as they lose their gaze upon the looping clouds and ever growing oaks. And happiness feels truly now, like it is for always.  

Then the bell tolls once. Almost melting with the blanket, the girl can make out faraway, familiar voices carried by the wind.

Where is our baby girl?
Where did she go?

The bell tolls twice. The girl opens wide her eyes, hearing worried hearts. Or is it her heart that worries now?

Jamie, come back!
Jamie, we…

The bell tolls thrice—

More like this:

---