Scene with Apple Pie and Bluebeard’s First Wife
The crush-close of the door. She stares, stares, stares. The hinges sink into place, glint against vanilla scented walls, into the plastic wood product of cheap. He would return. His calloused hand will feel the key into place, the lock will click for him as always, his palm will smooth and pressure the knob into turning. The door, after all, is just another body. Lines instead of curves, anchored in place. It will swing in minutely, suspend momentarily like a timer counting down the last five seconds before the buzzing alarm sounds.
But it isn’t about the door, never about him or the bruises or the breaking down again and again. It was about her, always her. He knew her destiny. She fought it, looked for the path beyond, but all eggs are open palms waiting.
Strawberries and whip melting in ice cream. She tries to crush-close the door, to be on the other side, the outside, the side of leaving; after all, returning belongs to the one intent on leaving, and everyday is a return of something, a 24-hour waking state, a pulsing blackberry picking bramble. She sleeps behind her eyes and watches blood slide against laminate floor, into bronzed pie pans waiting.
What she wants is the muse, the voice at the bottom of the bottle that said: write this down and write this down now. Like new recipes, Mystical Mechanic Pie, cranberries, cashews, bacon with dark, wavy lines, dark, wavy curves. Whatever speaks to her limbs, the way he speaks to cars with oil leaks and stuttering breaks. The language of blue and black paint jobs, berries and nuts, open palms, split lips, the copper of blood.
Her truth is this: she was meant to search for the fairytale, but it was the not finding that defined who she was, not just where. The where could exist anywhere. The castle, Manderlay or the cabin dark, dark in the forest. The trail of ash smoked away clean.
She paints her lips blood-red and crushes all eggs in her sleep.
She never leaves the trailer house, bake pies until her hands are raw and pink and juicy. She likes the feel of crust, like skin, leaves nail prints along the bottom like tattoos. Like initials scratched into the backs of lovers. Her fingertips knead and sink into the cold, imagine the heat and fullness of later. She gives each pie a date, sets up the blueberry with the banana cream, creates offspring like banana-blue.
He eats them like air. Tastes her flesh in every bite and smiles.
In anticipation, she preheats the oven to 375. Bakes away the grime. A door closes. Her hands become potholders to remove items from molten temperatures. The way the shelves burn to touch, the grids should be pottery. Moved past glazed, to chards and ash. With a Sharpie, she draws apples inside the cooked blackness. Leaves the fumes from every pie swirling the smoke detector. Watches air peel away layers. Slips away to another day.
The mix becomes a salve, the flour and sugar sparkle and mat until pieces of hair turn gray. Until flesh looks better in the dark. Until yokes gel away distinction.
Dishes pile in the sink, run under and out the other side of the drain, follow the stuck-on remains. The ones not tasted away. The ones that wanted to stay.
She watches the door handle, watches, watches. Her hands crushed-closed in her lap, her flowered corset of spring cold in the December air. The air smells stale of cigarette smoke and crust and burnt flesh, but she doesn’t move to open a window, to see beyond. Imagines the icicles giving directions. Snowflake voodoo. Long gone flights of geese. She focuses on metal panes outlined, the superstructure that holds together. Visualizes the wire mesh keeping hands out, in, grazing wind. She watches the stillness of the valance, imagines how it would twist and turn, suffocate itself in the breeze. How the dust on the windowsill would catch its death mask, its last reach. The plastic blinds are cut marks. The wood-paneled walls are sentries.
About the Author
Kara Dorris is the author of Have Ruin, Will Travel (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and When the Body is a Guardrail (forthcoming, 2020). She has also published five chapbooks. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, DIAGRAM, Puerto del Sol, Crazyhorse, and Nine Mile as well as the anthology Beauty is a Verb. Her prose has appeared in Breath and Shadow, Waxwing, and the anthology The Right Way to be Crippled and Naked. Currently, she is a visiting assistant professor of English at Illinois College. Dorris’ forthcoming chapbook, Carnival Bound [or, please unwrap me], co-written with Gwen Paradice, will be published by The Cupboard Pamphlet in 2020. For more information, please visit karadorris.com.