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  • Writer's pictureDavid James Parr

The Thing with Annie

Updated: Oct 1, 2021

Annie's eyes: rimmed in black, shadowed with hues of blue and purple. Bright green flecked with brown. They glow in the dark.


If Annie had asked me to jump off of any building, off of any height, I would have. Not now, of course. But before, yes. Back then, without question.


Annie's voice: smoke and gravel, with a pitch that can slice right through you.


I'm not sure what it was exactly. Her bravado. The jolt of adrenaline I got every time I saw her waiting for me. Bursts of laughter that swelled like waves. The strange, dark caverns of escape that she showed me. Rounded, narrow, shaped like attics, with her hand firmly clasped in mine. Or was it mine in hers?


The way she moved: quickly, purposefully, as if she always knew where we were going. It's possible that she did know. It's possible she knew all along.


Annie's silences: dark, chilly pools extending forward. You either sink or swim.


I see her now suffused in only one color: crimson. The color of dead autumn leaves as they fall from trees, the color in fairy tales worn magisterially by evil queens, the color of dried blood if you don't clean up the mess after. I didn't clean up that mess after. It's still there for all the world to discover. Just follow the stench.


Annie's tongue: twisted and veined like a fresh leaf of purple lettuce; wicked, bitter, sharp as a spade. It can dig your grave.


I just wish it had been a building that Annie had asked me to jump off of. Instead of the tall, jagged cliff of her heart, which I now realize was made of stone.


The thing with Annie is that she doesn't let go. The thing with Annie is that I can't let go of her. The thing with Annie is that there are many things with Annie, and maybe I was just one of the things.


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