Creature by Amina Cain Read Free Book Online Page A

him a gold watch he would like to refuse, but he takes it. Now he has two things to hold. I’m hungry because I haven’t eaten in weeks. Something inside me is doubling over. I’m all alone now, but this is the way I wanted it.
    Time opens up and something is wrong. The wind blows in the opposite direction. The sky is a strange color. Even my voice sounds like someone who hasn’t spoken in a long time.
    When I rehearse, I don’t have to memorize my lines. The auditorium holds my thoughts and all I have to do is step into them. I am getting closer and closer to something, but I don’t know what it is. Only that it is here. On my dress. In the air. When it is not my turn to be on stage I sit in the wings, and think, and sew.
    Tonight I’ll eat bugs. I won’t complain because it’s all I have. The days are getting longer. Someone said hello to me on my walk. Soon, I’ll only feel pleasure.

GENTLE NIGHTS

When people look at me they sometimes think of the word “decadence,” but I only have the face and body of a decadent person, not the experience. I am someone who enjoys getting rid of things, even if it seems like I should be sitting down in a jewelry store surrounded by gold.
    Something has brought me here. Violent paintings. Almost all of them are religious. Here, in the middle of the gallery, is that famous one of St. John the Baptist’s head on a platter. See the shadows on Salome’s face and neck? When I see too many paintings like this, I emerge into something softer, allowed the pleasure of arriving from a museum into a warm winter night. This is why I look. Snow blankets the ground, but not coldly. I could take off my coat if I wanted to. I don’t have to wear gloves.
    Usually I gravitate toward paintings of village scenes. Look at this one with its bright dabs of light in the windows of the houses. I would like to go inside the houses. I would like to go inside those rooms above the pastry shop. In one of the windows sits a simple striped chair and a side table with books on top. I could read in that room, and entertain guests.
    Even though I am not a decadent person, I have had decadent friendships. I have been able to love many people. Today I miss everyone and I look at the paintings feeling near to something.
    I have been trying to figure out my relationship to the person I live with, who I also love, though I don’t know him very well. We have only lived together for a few weeks and in that time there have been many nights of sitting bundled up on the porch, and now that it’s even colder, in the living room or the kitchen, or one of us reads in bed. It is me who usually lies in bed, sometimes with my laptop. I look at things on the Internet, but I am still aware of the mountains around us. They have become part of everything and the Internet doesn’t stop this.
    Here is a winter scene in which a shrub covered in snow looks like a tarantula. And a painting of a frost fair on the river Thames in 1684. A full marketplace set up for the freezing, the doors of the tents flapping, and people riding over the ice on their horses to get to them, or walking in groups of three or four, with a dog running on ahead. In this painting the light comes from a small fire on the edge of the frozen river.
    Here I am returning home. My figure crosses the landscape; a mountainside with dark houses perched here and there. Now I am on the porch, stamping the snow from my boots. The person I live with is heating something on the stovetop.
    We embrace. The room is warm from the stove.
    “You look like you want something,” he says.
    “It’s just the way my face is shaped.” The living room is sparse and perfect. Two comfortable chairs with an oval rug between them. A clear glass bowl sits on the windowsill. All the boxes are gone.
    “It looks great in here,” I say. “Actually, it might be the best place I’ve ever lived in.”
    “Me too.”
    “I’ll go organize the bedroom.”
    All of our bedroom things are