Up On a High Shelf, the Living and the Dead

Len Kuntz

All her wigs are lined up by hue, each nestled atop a torso-less mannequin, just heads, and of course a sight like that can frighten anybody, especially a kid as young as me, yet I find a footstool from her closet to get a closer look where they sit like glass-eyed zombies, freaky, ghostly, these facsimiles of women who are not my mother. I recognize nothing but the tinny odor of her hairspray, remembering how that was always the last application after her shower and wardrobing, accessorizing, checking makeup in the mirror. I am strong but I admit to missing her, to needing the warm wind of my mother’s breath down my neck as she napped. That time seems not so long ago, like night which was up and then gone, a curtain drawn then opened. So now I do the damndest thing. I close my eyes and rifle my fingers across the plastic cheeks of each mannequin. I picture skin and a face, pretty. I touch there but not the hair, the wigs which are styled perfectly.


Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State, an editor at the online magazine Literary Orphans, and the author of the story collection The Dark Sunshine. His latest story collection, I'm Not Supposed to Be Here and Neither Are You is forthcoming from Unknown Press in March of 2016.

Comments

  1. A perfect ending to a fine flowing story.

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