The Human Curio

She called you an emotional cripple, my love. That clockwork-ugly girl with her pudding-soft mouth. She threw that ugly, splinter-syllable at the beautiful quiet brokenness that I adore. Then she dared to speak of your valor, holding that sacred, heavy thing up to the light like a cheap carnival toy, accusing you of wearing it for polish and shine. A blasphemy. A cricket chirping critiques at a thunderstorm. She does not understand art. So I must make her into a piece that will teach her. I have a plan, you see. A quiet little project for us. With my gentlest hands and an artist's eye, I will correct her composition. Her lungs, those little pink bellows for wrong-words, I would fill them with river-silt and your silence, pack them so full of your heavy peace that they could never again draw breath for a lie. They would be lovely, dense paperweights for your sad old letters. Her vocal cords, those two little liar-strings, I would pluck them with my tweezers like the strings of a tiny, out-of-tune harp. Then I would weave them into a cat's-cradle between my own fingers a little souvenir of a promise. A promise that no one will ever misuse their voice against you again. But the centerpiece, my darling, would be her mouth. I would pry it open one last time, a perfect O of surprise, and I would take that little serpent-tongue and pin it. Pin it flat and preserved like a rare and foolish butterfly. Its blasphemy would be silenced forever, a curled, dried petal of a mistake. I'd frame it with her own pearl-white fence of teeth. I would mount the whole pretty display on a velvet stand and place a glass bell jar over it, so no dust could settle on my work. A little brass plaque would be affixed to the bottom. It would read: The Girl Who Did Not Understand Valor Circa: Now It would be my gift to you, my quiet king. A pretty, silent ornament for your study. A quiet little monument to the day a silly girl learned that some gods should not be named aloud. And her silence would finally be as profound and respectful as your own.