Bottles
It was an ordinary day—un jour plus ordinaire—the day you died. At least, it was for most people. They’d walk through French stonework on the way to class, worried about some exam or the way that girl with a skirt an inch too short looked at them—or didn’t. Watching them now, it’s all fun, fun, fun. Anything to get away from their dreary, boring two bezant lives. But not you.
You were perfect: your swagger made me believe you just didn’t care, your subtle arrows of words pierced those centuried walls, and your smile let us walk slyly by. You’re here—not there, not under their clutches—maman, papa, grand-mère, la dernier soeur.
Besides the glass, you curl up and stare up at me, wondering if I’ll notice, if I’ll remember, if I’ll cry. No, never. And yet, your blue eyes do not meet my silhouette. What’s stopping you? Why don’t you get up and start a conversation—ask me about my day? Je vous mets au défi. What’s to stop you from sliding an extra bezant into that sullied man’s hand as he pays for his triple-strength wit-sharpening potion, or from lifting that extra glass of giggle water from the bar and topping it up with a splash of lime? The bartender is about twenty-seven, your age, and seems, like you, to be alone. Slide her a smile—the cunning one.
You’ll knock over my things—that’s how you’ll get my attention. First the small bottles—the empty ones. You always thought there were too many—brown ones, green ones—and it didn’t matter that they were cheap. Wash your hands, get yourself dirty.
Mistake, mistake, mistake—arrête ma chouchoutte—you whisper in my ear as you watch the ingredients flit down into the cauldron: chubara scales and thyme. The wind whistles your song—a French lullaby—to pass the time. Fais dodo, colas mon p’tit frère. Her voice, high-pitched but unstrained, informs your rendition, turning my cauldron into a childhood plaything.
The way you look back at me through the glass—it’s not real to you, is it? You’re filled with chrysanthemums, and basilisk oil, and pine nettles—all commonplace to you because it's so much easier to sit on a shelf than be out in the world. Out, out, out amongst the chaos of the field, chasing Kelpies rather than answers.
Oh, that’s not what it was? Tell me. Dis-le moi maintenant.
Now, that’s not fair: the way your smile curls around the side of the bottle just like that. She’s my customer—just look at how skillfully she flicks the bones in her wrist as she pours a glass of giggle water—and you've had your chance.
You won’t go. You’ll keep her waiting in your polished leather shoes, the ones Oncle Alexandre bought for you in Confluences. How proud you had been then, freshly nineteen and a true Lyonnais. Go on, tell me how ashamed you are to find me Parisian. Smell me. Pick up the washed tones of La Seine in my hair, and trace her veins from the outskirts to find me.
That’s how you did it, personne ne t'a dit? How do you reflect yourself into every glass? You see my face and you pull on the fat in my cheeks until the lines resemble yours—except they always did. When you lay on the shore, cold, your skin was my skin. I had not your skill then, but I have your skin. Your skin curls around this bottle I crafted. Should I crush it? Would you want that?
Non, ici quand tout vous abandonne, on se fabrique une famille invisible.
You haunt me still. You haunt me in the nettles. In the instructions on the parchment. In conversations with customers and vendors alike. In the leather that dons my back. In dark alleyways, familiar and foriegn. And in the giggle water that seals a coy deal.
Toi, mon frère, I feel your soul in the glass—in every single bottle.
