Yasmeen Khan (14)
The Flowers
All anyone needs to know about me is that I am very ambitious but someone gave me a flower once and I kept it for months on my nightstand, letting it rot and fume like flesh. By the time I threw it away its petals had aged into papery membranes, pink dissolving between my forefinger and thumb. This is meant to symbolize nothing. We are not in English class. We are standing in a park of tennis courts and solemn evergreens and pools I swam laps in as a child. I am holding a racquet in my left hand and the flower in my right. I toss the flower into the grey sky, and with a swing of the racquet, I smash it into dust.
The Flowers
All anyone needs to know about me is that I am very ambitious but someone gave me a flower once and I kept it for months on my nightstand, letting it rot and fume like flesh. By the time I threw it away its petals had aged into papery membranes, pink dissolving between my forefinger and thumb. This is meant to symbolize nothing. We are not in English class. We are standing in a park of tennis courts and solemn evergreens and pools I swam laps in as a child. I am holding a racquet in my left hand and the flower in my right. I toss the flower into the grey sky, and with a swing of the racquet, I smash it into dust.
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That is a lie. In reality, my flower passed away quietly: a slip of my hand above the trash can, the garbage truck circling my block on a dewy Wednesday morning. I can’t play tennis but I can play cello and I’ve taught myself how to run for miles and miles until I am alone in a room with nothing but my body and my shallow, shallow breaths.
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I can play selections from Bach’s cello suites from memory. The selections were tedious to learn, because each phrase is meant to fade out and I am awful at letting things die. Bach’s suites are a study in lightness, in warmth, in frivolity. I did not want to play Bach; I wanted to play Debussy. Debussy’s music is not on the page. It floats phantom-like near its performer’s scalp, a flighty halo. Debussy’s music is the moment between confession and reply, the radio static found only in dreams. Debussy’s music is when I forgot my lines at a debate tournament, how I stood behind the podium with my chapped lips ajar, the words drying up on my tongue.
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Bach’s works are often described as fluid. Debussy’s, however, are more likely to be associated with colors. The color of my flower was originally a valentine rouge, but as time passed it darkened into the diseased brown of mold and pus. I still found it beautiful.
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I have loved dead flowers and dead eras and sonatas written by dead men. I am afraid that things die in my hands and I am too blind to let go, even when others are repulsed by the smell of rotting tissue, even when the skeletons shatter and I am left alone, plucking at the fragments of bone embedded into my palm.
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I like to believe they play Debussy in purgatory. My idea of purgatory is a cafe with Debussy pouring through the speakers, and in this cafe you have coffee with your childhood friends and stuffed animals and old vices, all the lovely things you never truly said goodbye to. The only way to find heaven is to ask for the check, to step out of your chair and walk away. I am very ambitious but I frequent this cafe, I drum my nails on my thigh and eye the pink flowers in a vase on the table. I order hot chocolate, I wait for my companion. I imagine that when I leave I will leave loudly, I will push the door wide open and the bells will ring and ring and ring.
Yasmeen Khan is a high school freshman residing in Spring, TX. She has been published in L'Éphémère Review and Bitter Melon Magazine. Her work has been recognized by the Texas Book Festival and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. When not writing, she can be found eating mochi and daydreaming copiously.
Yasmeen Khan is a high school freshman residing in Spring, TX. She has been published in L'Éphémère Review and Bitter Melon Magazine. Her work has been recognized by the Texas Book Festival and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. When not writing, she can be found eating mochi and daydreaming copiously.