Untitled by Armine Pilikian

They look to me to heal their wounds, to mend the red gulfs between flesh and flesh, but I tell them those run as deep as time, deeper even. I tell them, the Incans would write their history with strings; wars, famines, endemics, straight lines interrupted by a knots of human carcass. The dreads of history are messy and black and undulating, and I am no hairdresser. I am a woman who never wears stockings and who could cook a fine dinner in pure dense darkness, sit and eat it too.

But this town is lost; prayers, they do not help, nor do tears, meetings, or strong herbal teas. So they turn, for the first time, to a gypsy woman, with raven black hair and eyes the blue of false opals. I give them what I know but know it’s not enough. I become nervous. I rub my body in coals and dance, lost in mirrors. I try unhinging my jaw to see what healing waters might spill, down, down from my skull into hungry bobbing mouths. Nothing.

The morning was hushed, washed in pale white petals. A banging, Come, come, see my daughter. My bones were not yet settled, the day barely ripped open, but I followed this man nonetheless, to his home, to his daughter sitting in her bed motionless. Her eyes were bloodshot, skin yellowed and crude, lips yellow like disease. I could feel it pumping from her lungs, the yellow, as if they were caked with the powder of hard-boiled yolk. I closed my eyes and held onto her ankle. I saw the green filaments of fresh, white lilies, dancing and etching broken lines, pollen fertilizing the air.

“Lilies,” I told him as we were eating chili in the kitchen. “Shower her in lilies.”

Armine Pilikian is currently a junior at Stanford University pursuing an English Degree. Her work has been published in Solomon Dutch and Unlikely Stories. She’s from LA.