Lace
By Quinn Ramsay
Once I saw the world through a veil of lace, its brokenness patched with leaves of white. When I wore it, I could not see the things I didn't like. It patched up the holes that stretched in blackness, and the places where my colors ran into one another, fading and merging in murky splotches. When I worried, the weave might brush against my nose, and I would remember that there were mysteries. I would remember my blindness and rejoice.
He took it from me, in the end. He lifted it from my face, and I saw for the first time the shadows crouching between the church-stones, and the blur of things half-seen in the corner of my eyes, and the deep crevasse of his mouth as it stretched, black and wide, to chew those words: I do.
And so I did. And still I do.
I kept it, but I rarely put it on. I was content with discontent. But sometimes, in the deepest hour, when I could almost be alone, I might slide the veil from the drawer with a whisper. I might wander, ghostlike, through the corridors of his house, seeing nothing but the shapes of things.
Quinn Ramsay is a current student at the University of Glasgow. His prose and poetry have been published in From Glasgow to Saturn, Santa Clara Review, PLUM, and Gemini, and he has been a recipient of the Amy M. Young Award in Creative Writing. Most recently, he was a co-editor and designer for Williwaw: an Anthology of the Marvellous, a collection of short (and very short) magical realism by authors in Britain and the USA. (Updated September 2015)
