[P] aloha from hell

[Hagar]

HAGAR IESHAN

i am angry.
i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.

I

f I were not blind I could see how much Miriam loves us-- all of us, even our unsavory bits, the chaff that peels away from our best selves and rots before it hits the ground. She is the best of us, I think. I wish I loved anything as much as she does.

My affection for pilate comes closest I think: unchanging, warm, unconditional. There is nothing he could do in this life or the next that would make me love him less, this I know. If he smote Miriam where she stands, if these talented artists died alongside her and their only crime was being alive and present, I think I would still love him just the same. Even our mother would caution me against this-- but it changes nothing.

I don't look at her when she speaks. I'm watching the painting take shape, the sharp points of the sun, the blue gash of the river, darker in some places to suggest depth, and a long series of lines that connect them. The girl pulls a long, dark line down the cage of Miriam's ribs-- the horizon-- and I purse my lips.

You tell me, Miriam says. I look up now, just my eyes moving, and smile. "It seems to be some interpretation of the Mors." I say, and think I am correct: most of it is a soft orange and red that only those who truly know the desert see when they imagine it. I take a moment to appreciate the decision: to make it more clay than gold sand, the sky more white than blue. It looks more like me than anything else.

"And it is beautiful." I add, chased by a hot pang of shame. Miriam looks at me like I am some lovely secret now that I'm grown. Miriam looks at me like she is cracking in half just to see me. Miriam leans her head on my shoulder and the weight is surprisingly unfamiliar-- now that the actions of others are mine to dictate I'm not touched, much, anymore. I find myself wanting to be worthy of her love, painful as it is.

I realize seconds later that I don't think I am, really.
I reach for a spare paintbrush because if I reach for anything else it will be her, and her, and her, and I will never stop. "Let me help." I demand, sternly, and the girl stops stippling to hand the brush to me and make room for my body as it rounds Miriam's. I know what she will think. I don't meet her eyes.

"I'm going to stay out of the way, I promise," I say both to her and the artist-- little consolation, I think, for the manipulation, but I am beginning to think that if I do nothing but stand here I will die on the spot. I begin mixing, some of that same clay-red and some pink like a cherry blossom, and ask:

"Have you been enjoying yourself? I hadn't seen you during preparations. I didn't expect you to come, somehow."

@Miriam