SHE By Elizabeth Cook

She wears shorts with fishnets and shirts with prints older than generations and leaves her hair the mess her nest created when the morning came to retrieve her. She inhales her pack out of long cigarette holders and clomps in her father’s old combat boots with a full metal jacket. She paints her masterpiece with shades of black eyes and blood lips against cellophane skin. Her eyes are a natural shade of envy with a careless manner.

She ties a noose around her neck because it’s always cold in her world. I think it’s because she never wears underwear. A button up souvenir from the last guy she screwed loose around her frame. Halo covered by a black ski hat, she drinks her Caribbean OJ from jam jars in the mornings and wears heels when we visit the park to escape. She sucks on the gold cross necklace that hangs above her push-up and dances to Chapman.

She writes on a wooden stage because she wants her thoughts to be the center of attention. She steals library books only to draw pictures on all of the pages and return them and paints Dickenson graffiti on the knowledge canvas. Sometimes she lets the geezer in the park hit on her because he was her lover in a past life and climbs trees to get a better view of her kingdom.

Her best friend is a transvestite who drives a van with stuffed animals tied to it. He hosts shows every Tuesday where she wears no shirt. She brings books to our bonfires to burn them into her memory and keeps her Halloween decorations up all year because the world is always a scary place.

She insists we sleep outside under a full moon and claims the moon is really God. She moves about in the reflections in a way that hurts to look at her. She moves so gently that the earth cannot feel her but just swift enough to avoid my net. Perhaps I am never meant to catch her; just to behold her, like the moon itself.

© 2013 Elizabeth Cook

Elizabeth Cook is a student at Illinois State University with a passion for creative writing. She’s currently majoring in Broadcast Journalism with a minor in English, and loves to write flash fiction as well as fictional short stories and novels. She hopes to have one of her novels published by the time she’s 25.

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