Bone choir
.
They were dressed fantastically and they had dead eyes and they fanned themselves with lazy swishes that made the still air come alive. It was pushed towards their moody faces in a rhythm, lethargic and humid.
Flies buzzed around their pale long legs and bare feet. Massive Moroccan tasseled cushions became homes for the sharp elbows upon which they rested themselves. The flies never landed though. If you looked closely, you might catch them perching momentarily on the ruffles and collars and ebony buttons, but never did they touch skin, or the silky, deathly long hair that made its way down bony backs.
They are all together too composed, too wild in frantic unmotion. Alive but deceased, and indeed, a strange smell filled the air as they sipped sour Cherry fizzy drinks. Long fingers, backs of hands elegantly wiped corners of set mouths, leaving smears of the bloody tincture. How beautiful they seem and how horrid.
Pearl inlayed jewelry caught the light of their unhappiness just so, Bordeaux ruffles stayed trapped in stiff peaks and I can’t breathe when I watch.
They are calculated disinterest and broken hearts, no longer human, do you know what I mean?
They are real in the way ceramic dolls are, porcelain skin. Truly, they seemed crackable under the rouge and powder. Bony cheekbones that could split in half like a canyon in an earthquake crumbling and revealing the rich, bleeding soil underneath. Fluffy and dark and everything, and real.
The thick silence is decorated by those legendary fan swishes until one breaks into song. High pitched and in a minor key, with breaks of breath in order to be sustained. Her fingers move dully, as if to draw the melody into the air, and quite, everything seems colorless except for that sweet tone rising to the skies.
And then they join her in the Ds and E flats. Somehow both monotone and alive, unmoving, rotting bodies and beautiful notes, I watch transfixed, mute and rooted in place.
There is a slow collapse, soft ,and merlot glitter descends from the ceilings to covers everything, gently first, and then in a thick coat, until they are not real, not real, not real.
Time is thick, twinkling, bloodless faces look up and glimmer dreadfully, I am forced to ask myself, are they alive? but I know they are more alive than I, for they put on a display of life and death, and I only stand and watch.
