i wrote this for the final of the frank moran young writers competition! it has a very special place in my heart ❤️ i think it's one of the best pieces i've written
The table feels very real today and that’s the only thought in his head. People are definitely speaking but he’s not aware of it. His consciousness is in the table; walking through the grain and wandering through acres of oak. A small prick shatters his attention – a splinter.
He stares at his finger and the blood ballooning over the translucence of his skin.
A wave of silence greets him as he pushes the door open. The silence is all consuming and spans from the deepest fold of trauma in the darkest corner of his mind to the lie sitting under his tongue.
He halts by the piano, sinking in the chair. A cold ice blossoms in the base of his chest. It sits in the hollow above his diaphragm and stretches its legs out.
His bloodied finger meets the ivory of the piano. He did not bother to deal with his wound, and so he sits and watches in awe as the red streaks across the white keys.
He remembers his mum buying the piano for him. She bought it as an apology. Sometimes he can still feel the bruise that she was apologising for. It climbs up the staircase of his ribs and chokes him in the night.
There are some photos on top of the piano. A variety of half familiar faces don expensive looking photo frames. The frames are not expensive.
He vaguely recognises his own face, and partially, he recognises the face of a woman who loves him. The photo is hazy and lovely, like a half-intoxicated reverie. Memories from the day of the photo flash in his mind. His mother’s second wedding; celebration and wonder at how beautiful his date was.
But he spent the whole day thinking about the piano and bruises that never healed and how to soothe the ache of bones that broke decades ago. The picture was nice, but the day was remembered for the agonising pain and dent in the wall - he kept it there because no one had to know it was a terrible day except them. He could curate exactly how everyone saw them; tell a lie enough and you’ll believe it.
The piano is very loud. But it does not drown out the silence. He drags his finger up every octave, watches the blood trail after. Only halting when he hears his name, the silence grows louder.
“How was the meeting?” She repeats it a few times but he keeps watching the blood pulsate out of his finger. The splinter was very deep.
He shrugs in response, and finally finds the courage to turn over his shoulder and look at her. She looks very pretty when she’s distressed. Sort of like a half-peeled tangerine in the orange glow of the rising sun. Pretty, messy hair and pretty, swollen eyes.
“Why would you care?” He snorts. The ice in his ribs extends out of his lungs now and parachutes down his legs.
Some part of him begs to contain it, and wants to drop to his knees, claw it out of the ground before it gets near her. He throws her a look of contempt.
“Are you even clean?” Her voice is barely a whisper. She’s crying. The ice is behind his eyes now, exploding into fractals that obscure his vision completely.
He does not speak but he hears his voice. It’s loud and angry. He isn’t loud or angry. He’s not the piano and he’s not the bruise.
His stomach flips. She turns around and leaves. In her wake, she drops a small blue zip up bag. He realises that she knows.
He’s at a meeting. Only a little part of him hopes to find the splinter again.
A nudge on his elbow catches his attention and he stiffens, realising it’s his turn to speak.
Silence winds around the curves of his veins and arteries as he opens his mouth to speak and ice crackles around his teeth.
He skips his name. Identity eludes him. “3 months,” he lies.
Approving nods greet him, but his frozen legs lower him back into silence.
She doesn’t usually wait for him, but today she sits with her legs crossed right in front of the door. A quiet sigh escapes her mouth and she leans back. The tiles are cold against her back. The cold pushes through the cotton of her t-shirt, through her flesh and through her ribs and sits itself in the hollow of her throat.
The door opens and she knows it’s him. She doesn’t budge, watching him step over her with some semblance of mortification.
The ice of his hands was infecting her and she was dying too.
His mother was cold. Emotionally detached was what his father said.
Memories became reality. Memories became him.
The curl of his mother’s guilt became his. He saw it in the way his arms moved; swells and peaks of muscle that withered into her. The bitterness of her villainy became the clothes he grew into. Cruelty and brutality lodged between his teeth, lodged in his hair, lodged in his person.
And as he became her more and more every day, his life became a mirror. He used the same excuses as his mother; the same dry sobs at 3 am, the same clunk of the piano, the same bloodied finger, the same ice.
His most distinct memory of his mother wasn’t a moment, it was a feeling: the cold of her hands. Her touch was never warm. It wasn’t even really there. He was sure that if she reached out to touch him, her hand would pass through him.
He is the same. His finger touched the piano, but his hand passes through. He spoke to the woman he lived with, but the voice wasn’t his. If he reached out to touch her, would she feel it?
If he was made of ice, would he melt?
He was his mother’s lie.
Shifting in bed and pushing away the thoughts of his reflection, he reaches under his pillow and pulls out a small blue zip up bag.
There is something bizarrely comforting about eating a tangerine. Separating segments and peeling back the rind.
The house is a mess. There isn’t a single clean dish and she’s in the same cotton t-shirt as the night he came home and bled all over his piano. She doesn’t know when she changed it last.
Popping another segment of tangerine into her mouth, she glances at the clock. The tangerine isn’t ripe, but she carries on with her same routine, and drops the peel into the plate where she keeps her car keys.
Now, she’s sinking onto the floor by the front door. The cold of the tiles meets her the same way they always do, because it’s 2 am and he’s not home. She’s sure she should be crying.
Like usual, cold silence devours its way up her legs as she peers up at the door handle and waits. Shame tingles out of the cracks in her spine. She realises she doesn’t exist outside of the cold of his presence.
The door opens and he moves to step over her, just like every time. A gush of cold gathers around her. It follows him everywhere.
He is cold and silence and ruination. If a human could be a void, it would be him. He isn’t the man she loved.
He was his mother’s son. She could recall meeting that son for the first time. When his mother gave him the piano. They came home after her second wedding and sat together in silence, and that was when she met the little blue zip up bag.
That was when vases shattered on the wall, millimetres from her head. That was when he yelled so loud that he became silent; the day he yelled so loud that she saw the moon and God.
But he doesn’t step over her.
He sinks down next to her and knocks his head back against the wall. There is a weight in her hands, and she realises, somewhat detachedly, that there is a small blue zip up bag in her grip.
When she looks up, his eyes are shut and he barely seems alive. Yet he is squeezing her hand and for once, his hand is warm.
He touches her and she is solid, and so is he.
His mouth shapes an apology.
She blinks and wonders where to find the lie. Perhaps it is his apology, or somewhere in the depths of that little blue zip up bag. Perhaps it is the blood-stained piano, or the framed photo from the wedding.
Perhaps it is him.
After all this time, all it ever was – everything, everyone and every breath – was just a lie. If you hide enough, even existence becomes a lie.
In that moment she realises, with ice oozing out of eyes, that she too is a lie. The whirlpool keeps spinning and the lies never stop.
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