Telling Maybelline Jones
by Cami Park
Maybelline Jones is my sister, my friend, and I try to tell her the right way to be. “Look how other people do things,” I say, as she handstands across the grassy verge to get the mail, returning with it in her teeth. “Remember what happened to mother,” I warn, as I comb grass and scurf from her hair. But Maybelline Jones doesn't listen; she tends to the world with the salt from her eyes, and speaks to me with the blue of her skin.
One day enough is enough and, eye level with scraped knees, I tell her, “Look,” I say, “You are mismatched, awry, an odd genus. Breathless, like our mother, heedlessly joyful, like our father; drastically askew and out of place.”
But it is too late. She is out the door and down the street, somersaulting away from me.
Lovely piece. Beautiful glimmers of the bigger world and bigger story beyond the narrator.
Thanks, Sean!
Oh, nice! A lot of inner reaction to this because there is amazement and joy mixed with the realistic and sad understanding that, like a sprite, Maybelline is not meant for this world. Yet the reader roots her on.
Thanks, Susan!
I agree with Sean and Susan. This is a dreamy and dream-like piece. Nicely done.
Thank you, Marcelle!