Anna Blue and Elegiac Wind

Anna Blue had been an actress before the orange. She was wild and beautiful and didn’t care what the world called her, except for being here in the Asylum. Odd how that mattered too much. He wished her out, though he loved her until he was sick. He wished her out, with a wind of hope that would pick her up and carry her away.

He was Thomas Belfry when he met her. He was there before she was. He’d adjusted fine, writing his poetry and passing his days looking upon the things he could still touch, like the sky above which was most often white or taupe, but on sunrise and sunset, it drew its own poetry in fuchsias and magentas, in a fire of oranges and purples, or like the scrawny tree, all dusty green—olive, though he imagined that it might once have been verdant and vibrant like Anna Blue must have once been, or like the wall of stone, its colors reflecting the sky, the grays and browns that, when combined into such tight quarters one against another, somehow turned to shades of white.

These things fascinated Thomas, until he saw Anna Blue. She with her hair piled upon her head like a mist over a vast body of water, with her eyes, wide and deep, with her mouth that couldn’t smile but once smiled, he was sure of it. It took him six weeks and thirteen days before he approached her. He extended his hand to her and said, “Thomas Belfry, at your service,” and she looked up, for her eyes were always cast down; up she looked, and she made to raise her hand, but it fell back to her lap, so Thomas took it into his own, and shook it, and covered it for only a moment with his other one. She told him about the orange, how it had been rotten, and how she ate it anyway, and that’s what landed her in such a place. Thomas sat beside her, and told her he had T. B., accepting her story about the rotten orange, because every time she told it people corrected her, told her it wasn’t an orange at all, that she had (T. B.), too, and hearing such tales made her become shrunken, her cheeks and her chest.

“It is Tee Bee I have,” said Thomas, trying to make it sound musical, lyrical, a thing to be played with, not a thing to be feared.

After that day, Thomas sat beside her. He held her hand, her wilted hand, so soft and white, and they watched the blackbirds with the flame on their shoulders flitting around, and Thomas told her he loved her. Anna Blue looked at him, her eyes charcoal waiting to be lit.
They cut out Anna’s lung, and her ribcage, and Thomas cursed the rotten orange that had done such a deed to her, and Anna smiled. Finally, when he thought she would die, she smiled.

“That rotten orange has done its wicked deed,” Thomas said, “but it is finished. You will be free. Do you feel the wind picking up? The wind is coming, and you will fly over the wall, and you will be free.”

The wind blew Anna’s lovely hair, and her sunken cheeks filled, and one day, it blew her up in the air. Thomas held her, his hand to hers. He lifted up on his toes to prolong the touch. He wanted the wind to catch him, too, but, alas, it took only Anna Blue. Thomas, when she’d gone, changed his name to Elegiac Wind. He returned to his poetry, and he penned her a poem of a single line–the saddest poem ever written,

In Love Station In Tee Bee I Shaked The Hand One Dress The Charcoal Was The Eye and he cried as he wrote, his heart spilling out, and dripping upon the page.

Tethered

Modesto carried the secret for her, though he hated her, and though he knew she didn’t care whether he kept it or not.

“I wish to kill you,” he told her, and she laughed.

That was when he would still see her. He’d go to her to tell her how much he hated her, to tell her he wanted to kill her, and always she would overrule him by her laugher, and by her breasts, and by her thighs which she made naked for him. He would tell her she was sick. He would call her insane. He would scream that she was evil. He would bound to the door, clumsily, for his legs couldn’t work properly when they were palsied by hatred and lust, and fall against it. He would fumble with the lock, with the knob, struggle to pull it open, all the while her laugh tinkling like wind chimes in his conscience. He would fall out onto the stoop and down the walkway, tripping over himself, wiping tears from his face, making his escape.
The last time, he fell to it, to her, to her breasts, to her nipples, brown and luscious, to her thighs, smooth around him. He sobbed, but because he satisfied her, she didn’t laugh. She soothed him. She stroked his face, raised her hips to meet him, said, “Hermano, there is never another like you, my hermanito timido. You fill me, inocente. Call me Coqueto, amante mio.”

Modesto didn’t call her Coqueto. He couldn’t speak. He thrust into her, his tears ran upon her breasts and she rubbed them and whispered, “Such lujuria. I could die.”

He left her that time, and he bought potatoes. From the potato sack, he cut armholes and a hole for his neck. He sat in his backyard near the ashes where he burnt his garbage. He threw ashes upon his skin. He sat down, naked upon the pile of ashes still warm from the last time he’d used them.

“Kill her,” he cried into the ashes.

He stayed there for days. The nights were cold, the days were hot, and Modesto cried, “Kill her, I cannot.”

“Mercy,” he cried.

“I repent,” he cried. “I repent,” for he knew why he went to her. It wasn’t to confront her, it was that he was bound to her. He could never have another, not after what they’d done, and, God slay him, he wanted her still, as he had when they were still children and she had first awakened his body.

On the seventh day, when the filth clung to his body as to his mind, he rose up. “Never again,” he promised. “Never again.”

He wandered the streets of Navidad, crying out to any who would listen, “Never again.” He ate from trash cans, and took coins people tossed at him, though he didn’t deserve them. Like a clock work, sobs wracked his body; morning, noon, evening, and night, for it was at those times he thought of her, hating her, his Coqueto, his Amante, his Hermana.

Dawning

Dawn got the letter from Guy while she was giving birth. Her friend Carol brought it to the hospital, knowing what it would mean to Dawn to have it. Between contractions she read how Guy hadn’t called because they’d put the jail on lockdown twice, and could she please put money on his books, as it was he was getting an indigent package for his toothpaste and such, and he knows she’s busy and tired with the baby and all, but how nice it’d be to see her, and at least could she write? The letter was hard to read, not only because she was distracted with labor pains, but also because it looked like he’d written it while lying in his bunk, and because he’d had to scratch out all his mistakes seeing as there were no pencil erasers there. There were a lot of mistakes.

A lot of them.

Seemed like every other word was a mistake.

Dawn pushed and pushed, huffed and puffed, grunted and groaned, and thought about all the mistakes that made the letter so hard to read.

The baby came out squint-eyed and swollen, blue and waxy and bloody—a boy. They wiped his face, held him up to give her a glimpse, and laid him on her suddenly mushy tummy so all she could see was the wet hair swirled and jumbled and black, like the crossing out of a mistake.