Volume 3 Issue 1: Origins

A Girl Named Wendy

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Wendy, my upstairs neighbor, has rivers of white running over her wrists. At first I thought they were pretty, although now I know they cause trouble when they spill from the patchwork of bandaids and foundation she covers them with. When we sit together, she tells me she can't control the rivers and apologizes for the way they spill from her sleeves and drink up the floor. Rivers so parched that they’re not satisfied until they begin dripping from my bedroom ceiling.

wendy doesn't have to be sorry though

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i'm just glad she hasn't drowned

I know two of Wendy's secrets. First, she's cheating on her boyfriend with the wind. She's in love when she talks about him. Goes on and on about how he hugs her gently and blows kisses along her skin. He's a lover who loves without touching, a friend who’s always available. Most of all, he's her choice. Wendy's second secret is another one of these choices. A pair of red shoes she hides in the back of her closet. She wraps them in snowy tissues and puts them behind a Saint Nicolas doll, which has a pair of shoes and lips glued like her own. Fiddling with her fingers, she tells me it wasn't her doing. Her boyfriend was the one who made them that way because, according to him, saints with red tongues don't exist.

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I only visit Wendy when her boyfriend isn't home. When she can actually smile at her own laughter like she’s never heard the sound of it. Only when he’s gone does she pull out her special shoes and allow her hair to stick up. Only when he's gone does she not care if she dances or kisses the wind where everybody can see. Only then, because today she's not somebody's saint, and nobody can tell her to be one.

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Although I know a lot about Wendy, she doesn’t talk about her white rivers. Even when she’s drunk on wine I stole from Grandma's cabinet, she tells me I’m too young to understand. Instead, she rubs my cheek in drowsy circles and looks at me, like she's really trying to see me. And then, in a brief moment,, she stares at me like she's caught her own reflection.

like she's seen a little wendy

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whose rivers haven't started to run yet
 

Even so, we wait for tomorrow. We hang my white socks and her heels over the wine-stained cushions and lean so far back that even laughter says goodbye to gravity. Today, we are breathing, living, not even trying to keep our heads above water because there's not a drop of it in sight. Today we aren't saints or devils or Christmas dolls with lips sewn tight. We’re simply just freer than a few breaths before.

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But today starts to end when Wendy's boyfriend finds us on the couch. And today finishes when he sees the floorboards swollen with our laughter while his little angel Wendy kisses freedom on the lips.

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I'm not sure how her boyfriend knew her secrets, but maybe it was Jolly Old Saint Nicholas who told him. Maybe the glue keeping his mouth closed started to crack or maybe he finally learned to break on his own, all because he wanted to smile again. All I know is Wendy's boyfriend takes her heels and the wind and pushes them both out the glass door over the balcony. All I know is she's screaming and crying as he's doing all this, scratching his arms as he pushes her back and tells her he's gonna fix her this time. But there's no way to know if any of this is happening because I'm choking on all this water.

at first I thought it was Wendy’s rivers

that were going to drown me

but the sting of salt

In my eyes tells me

it's my own rivers that will.

Wendy doesn't come out for a week. Never steps outside to flirt with the breeze or call me for company. Not until he's gone again, and she returns to her usual spot, this time with more rivers than before.

Today, though, she’s not looking at me,

her shoes, or the wind. Just at her own hands

like she's wondering if with

one more river,

she will finally have

enough of herself to

Float

fAr,

faR

away.

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