Anna passes a note to Lady Mary after dinner
Let’s get out of here, Mary. I’m no savior so do whatever you decide. Melt exactly as you need to. My mouth is open. You know what this is like. You do. You do. Consider a strand of pearls between teeth, consider your silver hairbrush, have you noticed my hands? Around a hairbrush? Lifting another’s pearls?
If I’m being honest I’m jealous of your dark cold mouth. I want to fall inside the well of it and come up shivering but stronger. Cruel enough. You’ve been forced inside so many metaphors and I understand loving the thing that’s most likely to explode Mary, but what if there’s no metaphor, what if that’s the grand joke of it after all?
Jeff Buckley Covering Night Flight
I thought it would be “I Know It’s Over”[1] to do me in but this song is eyes-shut grinning
meet me in the morning, Jeff
some of you under my fingernails
1992 and you are having so much fun
I take you in from across the water
oh mama well I think it’s time I’m leaving
don’t worry Jeff
they won’t drop you from the record label
you are unrenewable
a man not glass but
I won’t drop you either
ringing my bell
(you didn’t have a chance to [ ] and I don’t know if I can talk about it)
m-m-m-m-m-make me feel alright!
two minutes, thirty seconds, and the guitar pauses
this is not a train but the inside of your throat
Me: :( :( :(
trying not to cry rn
Chris: God tell me about it
Me: just let it out
this collection was ordered so well
to end on this song
i just cannnt
Chris: I want a Jeff Buckley album of smiths songs like ryan adams did with swifty
Me: ughhhh stopppp
please please let me get what i want
& asleep
Chris: Don't
Me: WILLIAM IT WAS REALLY NOTHING
Chris: I SAID STOP
Me: yeah this song is doing enough fucking damage
Elizabeth Theriot grew up in Louisiana and earned her undergraduate degree from University of New Orleans. She currently lives in Tuscaloosa, where she is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama. Elizabeth works with the Black Warrior Review as Nonfiction Editor and with the program as Assistant to the Director. Her publications can be found online in Tinderbox, Requited, Pretty Owl, and Alyss; forthcoming in OCCULUM, Rogue Agent, and Crab Fat Magazine; and in print in The Mississippi Review.