Dreams of Loveliness
Colors. Colors and lights and black and red and brown and anger. Walls wobbled into circles and the stairs beneath her feet felt like jelly. Weak. Crawling, panting. Heavy door and too much effort. Splinters in fingertips and laughter and ghosts that no longer exist and grief that consumes all. The lack of light is blinding. Her skirts are silk and velvet and muslin and perfect and warm as blood and cold as ice and purple and yellow and orange and her hair is golden and blonde and red and pinned up, hanging down, greasy, poking eyes, itching necks. Tears. Clear things that fall from the sky and land on the floorboards that twist and turn and sneer and leer at her. She pulls herself up on the mirror. Not blonde. Not beautiful, not loved. Not Benjamin. Not Lucy. Not Johanna, not happy, not good. She stands, shaky, wobbly, knees knocking. She frowns, eyes burn and shine. Brown. Not blue. Shouts, anger, pain. Her fist slams into the mirror, sharp shards embedding themselves in her palms as the mirror shatters, a million luminescent sparkles flying around the room.
But the pain that shoots through her arms and the blood that runs down her hands makes her feel alive. She can think again. The pain clears her head. Sinking to her knees, Nellie slams her fists into the mirror again, cracking it lower as glorious pain shoots through her hands. And in this moment, she wonders if perhaps Lucy was not weak. If perhaps she was stronger than Nellie could ever be.