[workshop, 100 sentences]
Before everything else, before the table, before the die, before it all, there is a brush of a hand on what might be her forehead, just over her eyes. There used to be something to call her, the Creator gave it to her, and she locked it in her heart and told no one ever since. She is not the Sin, she did not create Sin, rather Sin showed up when she never came home. Green for victory, like fields of lost wars the following springs, like dragonflies and certain types of puss, but never, ever for wealth. No apologies, she’s not that sort of deserving.
Rome successfully eliminated her taste for cities, for organization, for structure and men in gold. Everyone who has ever been born, died, thought of, or coughed up exists in her box, for her just as them. A runaway bride more than two hundred times, but only two of them really counted. There was a time when she stood in a rice paddy, Japan at her feet and a warrior cried. Do not get her started on cats (one made it out through a good roll, then it bred). She cares more for thieves than gentlemen, for they wear their honesty better. Somewhere on a hillside in the south of France, a little redhead girl opens up her palm with her too green eyes, whispering “Venez mes petits enfants” as a king loses his head.
Luck never was her name, just her job description. There have been more who have loved her than there are stars in the sky, but only one has ever been in love with her. The truth is, the more she says that it’s not her fault, the less she believes it. Creation simply cannot be done properly (cannot create, no art, no fucking beauty) without her, best catch-22 in the book. Her feet are broken, black and blue, from moving, running, pushing too hard in shoes that looked too good, but never fit.
It’s not that she disliked Ned Coates (there are very few she doesn’t like, and even then it’s just distaste); she merely had no idea. It’s not that she never came when called, it’s just that she mostly came when most doubted. Wrapped up in flowers, red silks that move in the oncoming winds and she kisses the bride with her painted hands and feet in the warmth of that day in Bombay and it’s a blessing, not a curse. A train comes, too early and a die is thrown, clatter clatter, and he misses it, it’s a miracle. Some days, she would kill for a good set of working headphones.
“Come on, just one more turn,” he begs, and she laughs, because all she does is laugh, laughing since she started, and she kisses him, and shakes her head and answers, “You’re not that lucky, baby.” Oh my darlings, I love you all just enough to set you all ablaze. She always had a certain desperate attachment to Danger Mouse (rodents on motorbikes, who could refuse). It’s child’s play to need people to believe in you to survive, and she’s far outstripped children. A rainy day, rainbow cruelly peaking through the clouds as a father buries child, and she leans forward and kisses both his cheeks, his too young with her back to them, and everyone tries not to cry.
It will be all right, that is your single chance. Winners are terribly annoying lot (they gloat, they fight, they nag). Home is where the heart is, but she never had much patience for hearts (diamonds aren’t really a girl’s best friend). She has seen Mary Poppins so many times, she can quote all the dialogue backwards and forwards, and it will always be just as good as the first, with cheap gummi bears stuck to her shoes. Waterloo, yeah, that was definitely her fault, but it was funny, really funny.
History always forgets the losers, she never does. It takes more effort to be inhuman and hold them dear than it does to be human and let everyone go. Oh Julian and John, why did you both stop letting her be Lucy in the sky (fell asleep, it was forever)? No one ever thanks her, but what does one do with a thank you in the first place. Ungrateful mongers. Moist von Lipwig, her Postmaster, now that’s one that she would write a letter to (she’ll confess, the horse did show up, and perhaps she was sitting beside the driver of the sled, ugly women made pretty in shadow).
Slag off you whore, just because she laughs at you doesn’t mean you’re the joke. Dawns after dawns, she remembers first ones and lasts ones and ones that never mattered much, but sunsets are really better. Gin martinis are better than vodka ones, and whoever thought up Southern Comfort Manhattans was clearly deranged. It’s a wild ride, a fast ride, a go go go, gotta get going, gotta keep moving, it’s like being high all the time without trying (the crash hurts so bad, too bad the falls only crush everyone).
There is something beautiful in the desperation of a gambler (a chancer, a man on his last hope) that she can never quite explain. Her favourite troublesome activity is stealing doorknobs. Only fools pray for her, to her, kneel at her feet (she has no patience). Six shots in and nothing is fuzzy, but she dances, keeps whirling and touches everything. Darling, Sacharissa, she never handed her the opportunity, she merely opened the door (the girl is too smart not to keep walking).
Never underestimate the sheer worth of overdone eggs. People believe that she’s never there, the fact is she never leaves. Heroes are such wasteful creatures. A chainsmoker in a faded paper covered bar, stirring her drink and there she is, pressing on the edges until its glorious. Oh Russia, up they come and down they fall (blood, blood, blood). Times come and she wishes she could eat them all alive, just to spit them out.
The Disc, now that was a sheer moment of brilliance. Nothing is ever flat, it’s just really very sharp. Remember what those Python boys always say. There were thirty seconds on a place far and nonexistent, that she thought lavender was a good choice. The perfect metaphor is the fact that they are swimming, moving forward, just moving. Turn an elephant the wrong way and it spells bad luck, rains it down on all your houses. There are pocket universes, pickpockets, pocket-mouses, uses for pockets one cannot even fathom here and it’s just the sort of vacation she wanted.
Sometimes she pretends to be people. Once she was young (or at least she felt young), with too much hair and she asked a question. Who did she ask this question to? The One Who Came First, who not even she can undo, or speak of, naturally. What was it (this dear sweet question of the youth of grace and fortune)? “And where do we go from here?” “We just keep on, until find a solid place to rest our feet.” Some answer. Too bad, she’s still looking.
Lost causes are so much more interesting than those who have always had backing. If she took a vacation, switched out of who, what she is, where would the universe be? Shambles, nothing, a wasted mess. First comes Hope, then she comes to hold Hope’s hand through the troubles that lie on the road ahead. No waiting. Chin up soldier, the war is not yet lost. Please forgive, please forget her, forget her, forget her. The smell of danger, of dirty gin, of warm baked goods and that which you loved and lost, that’s how she smells. Romeo and Juliet were really sweet, really mixed up kids, but they asked, and they’re parents deserved the hand that was dealt them. She wouldn’t change that one for the world.
The Auditors have been trying to fill out the paperwork on her eons. They’ve also been trying to nullify her too. You get the picture. It’s always icicles, why icicles. She doesn’t even know anymore. Shit, Vegas was a hellhole, she’ll give them that. Monaco was much classier. A little boy in Iran sees plant grow in the shade of the hillside for the coming spring and the end of a war, and she’s there, for a moment at least.
“Just call me-” a real name once spoken is lost on the wind of existence, dead in the air to never be heard. What if she owned her face? What would that make her? Personalised. She is every man’s. She is no man’s. Years of compartmentalising have made her terribly ADHD. On her bad days she would run over a good goat for a pair of wedges. Don’t ask about her good days.
No matter how long she is human, all heartbeat and air, she’ll never get it. It’s a mystery she’s not allowed to keep. There are prices one pays for Being and being, and once she tried and failed. Love, love is something people only think needs her (it’s a lie, it’s a travesty, it’s the after that does). Break the rules and you’re fucking condemned by them (she’s tied to something she loathes).
Go on, close your eyes, she’ll give a kiss, best you’ve never had.