The Scarf
Written by Kelly on February 20th, 2010The curious girl with the father of dirty fingers and calloused thumbs leaned against the frozen wall of the supermarket. She ate a peach. She took sloppy bites and let the juice drip from her chin onto the collar of her shirt. She liked to watch people enter and exit the supermarket. She would examine their carts filled with vegetables and laundry detergents. She would peer into their bags, try and imagine what color they painted their kitchens. She liked to imagine what they might be making for dinner that very night. The curious girl was a spy.
In the parking lot, a foreign couple walked hand and hand. Their heads were bent in a conspiracy. The wind picked up. It bit down on the shoulders of the girl’s thin blouse. The wind reached out its hand and snatched the woman’s scarf. The scarf rose into the air like quotations surrounding unspoken words. It swelled against the sky like heartbreak. The girl watched the scarf. She ached.
The man took long exaggerated strides across the parking lot in a vaudevillian attempt to halt the flight of his lover’s silk scarf. The woman laughed. She threw back her head. She offered her throat, exposed and vulnerable.
When the man caught the scarf, he cheered. He raced it back to his lover. The woman greeted him in a thick embrace. He kissed her like desire. The curious girl watched as the lover wound the length of the cobalt scarf around the arched tender of the woman’s milky neck. The woman sighed sweetly.
With her lips still sticky and wet from the juice of a peach, the curious girl heard this sigh and it unhinged her. She watched the man winding the scarf around the woman’s neck. She felt it like a noose tightening.
20
AM
Lovely. I can feel the electricity in this.
20
PM
Oh my goodness gracious. Wow. Phenomenal power, and grace, and beauty.
22
AM
Such a vivid picture you paint with your words.
22
PM
I love this!
22
PM
It sounds as if she had experienced a noose around her own neck. Perhaps she was abused?
27
PM
so sharp, so bright.