Lenore
If the mirror isn’t lying, then I know I am faceless.
I try to remember what I looked before, this word hangs around me like a fluttering of feathers.
I know there is an answer, out there, somewhere, something knows who I am, and while it may seem an unsolvable mystery to me, the truth that can never be uncovered exists. Waiting, observing. I reach for it always but it flies away from my outstretched limbs.
***
I find the book tucked away in a second hand antique store, behind a phonograph and a dusty typewriter. Its corners chipped away, thin stands of a strawberry-red scratchy cover poking out. The name of the author faded completely away, so is most of the title, only a capital, cursive, golden ‘L’ remains, made up of swirls I feel the need to incorporate in my own calligraphy. I know it in my heart it was done by a hand equipped with a quill.
Name and ownership lost to time, I try to imagine what it is about, who could have been compelled to write it, to choose this vibrant cover. These answers exist, but cannot be obtained by me. The unknown is presented to me in this moment for the very first time, and I drive myself to frustration trying to eradicate this feeling.
In the end, not knowing is unacceptable, so I present it a new truth. I am its author, I now own this book. And the name, the swirling bright lines, is one that is known to me too well.
Lenore.
***
I read it, captivated. The words conjuring imageries that run wild around me in my imaginations, ones that too often are then hand-lend away by my own thoughts. When I close it, I forget.
The story gone.
The images blown away by a flapping of wings.
I rub my eyes, adjusting to the sudden penumbra around me, the cold parquet beneath my bare legs, ruffled bed sheets cascading behind my perched back like a cape.
I reopen it and the words are familiar, but I find myself lost, needing to flip my pages back to the beginning of the novel.
***
My feet are gone, but are they really? Did I ever have any? Can something be gone if you never possessed it in the first place?
I still feel them, sometimes. But it cannot be true. I look at the photos adorning the walls, whenever I am not busy reading, and I am told I never had them to begin with. They are strategically placed to cover any patches of peeling blue wallpaper. The walls are white beneath, and if I squint I see waves topped by foam.
I try to wiggle my toes. I feel something. This part of my body stuck in the thickness of my memory, altered by time.
The truth is out there but I do not know it.
***
I think I write in the margins, adopting that beautiful cursive that my red cover sports.
I did write this then, I am its author, this one truth uncovered.
I cannot feel my arm. It is cold to the touch and I recoil when my own hand brushes against the skin, it tells me that it’s something other, something foreign.
But it is my arm, is it not?
Could it have been attached when I wasn’t looking? Sewn together like a quilted picnic blanket, painted over by an expert hand so I wouldn’t notice?
I write on. My notes, my thoughts, I don’t register what I write, I just do.
And I wonder, what such a beautiful story should be called, what word could possibly capture this tale.
***
Have I ever uttered a single word in my life? I compel my voice to leave my body, to emerge as I am sure, almost, that it has done time and time before. If not words, a melody, the whistling notes of a song that is picked up by birds. They prefer shiny objects; this is all I can offer them.
I must have had a voice at some point. Where did I hear the melodic tone that inhabits and gives life to my thoughts, that read my book to me, the nameless book I have written, and loved and adored my whole life?
***
If the mirror isn’t lying, then I know I am faceless.
I try to remember what I looked before, this word hangs around me like a fluttering of feathers.
Smooth skin and even smoother hair. Hooded eyelids remain, my lips’ crimson complexion melted away into the softer colour of my flesh.
I hear something, a croaking. I drop the book, startled. It is the first time I have ever heard a noise.
A creature, a bird. The first living being I have ever come across. I watch it breathe and try to replicate the foreign movement with my chest.
It flies away, a fluidity I could never achieve. And I wonder where it goes, why, if it will be back, why it came here in the first place. I ask myself questions I could never possibly answer, I feel frustration build up somewhere, far away into an abyss that is out of reach to me.
I forget about it, about the questions, what the truth is, about the bird, The abyss removed, I open the book.
***
It lays on the table, over rusted metal, right before me, but I am unable to reach it. The fading symbol on its front mocks me, I am sure. I don’t know what it means, I don’t have a way of ever finding out or getting closer. It is there. Within reach, out of reach.
I feel the winds grazing my arms. I tell myself it is cold, but I don’t know.
And it comes again, that creature, that being. It is every colour I can imagine, a thousand red book covers placed together, getting infinitely darker. It balances on those thin legs, I wonder if they have ever broken, if it feels afraid at the prospect. I think, for a second, that it should be me.
It lands on the book, I cannot stand it. Someone’s book, someone’s work, the stupid creature landing on it with its limbs. All I can do is watch and think why.
It turns to me and I cannot turn around. I stare, it stares. I think it wants to say something, I want to tell it to speak its mind, to tell me, to do something.
But it flies away. Kicking off, the book falls off the table.
I catch a glimpse of a golden symbol. Hidden forever from my vision, behind its legs, I forget it ever existed at all.