My aliferous lover lived in the middle of a glade, a five-minute walk from my backyard and through the woods. She was made of rain-streaked marble dripping in honeysuckle and ivy; her arms spread wide and hands open for a lover’s touch, the craftsmanship in expert with the carving of her thin gown and moss-mottled wings. But her beauty: incomplete. There was no head to lead her. Just the column of her neck, which was brutally severed into crumbling rock. The sun flirted through the patchwork leaves and speckled golden kisses across the hairline cracks about her collarbone, along the supple marble of her open palms, to finally drizzle down her bare, toned calves.

I’ve seen her move: the dance of the headless statue. A superior simulacrum of the Sugar Plum Fairy, wading her ballet over the dewy grass and dandelions. She would sweep herself through willow vines and shake up the petals of her honeysuckle cloak. I started my ballet lessons to keep up with her, although if we were to perform a duet, I couldn’t handle the man’s position. I am only a clumsy girl with short, skinny arms, and she is a blessing of delicate marble. But I practice in dance class with her moves alongside my mind, and every day after school and lessons, I rush out to the glade to watch her. She was shy. She could not see, smell, hear, or speak, so it was all touch. My hand, soft and fleshy, met the shock of hers, cold and rain-scraped. She wouldn’t move at first. Playing dead in the touch of a stranger. I was too eager in my initial approach, and I scared her out of movement for weeks. Eventually, though, she crept back into her dance, and I began to approach more cautiously. I simply watched, and then, after a while, I began to dance as well, starting from a distance. She could sense me. I could tell, as she would occasionally freeze and wait. Her periods of waiting would lessen over time, and in tandem, I would dance closer to her.

One day, I reached again for her hand. 

One day, she did not freeze up.

Her hoarse hand curled around mine with indomitable strength but irrevocable gentleness. She had lacked a partner for so long. We switched from ballet to an instinctual waltz. It drizzled that day. My sweater and grey wool skirt got soaked, and rain pooled in the crenelations of her broken neck. I used to have an umbrella with me, but earlier at school, Tammy Watts had stolen it for herself. So we kept dancing through the rain with nothing to protect us. We trampled daisies and flattened the grass into a smooth plateau for our dance floor. The only music was the pattering rain and rustling leaves. We kept going until I had to bow out due to blistered feet and rain-soaked exhaustion. 

I limped to school the next day, layering two socks on each foot to cushion the blisters. That day, Tammy Watts had unscrewed a bunch of pencil sharpeners so she could put the razor blades in my desk. I cut my hand while looking for a pen. A long, bleeding sting from the top of my palm to the bend of my wrist. It didn’t need stitches, but I couldn’t hold the pen properly when I returned from the nurse, and Tammy Watts giggled throughout class behind me. It was a shame that she had such a melodious laugh.

When I returned to my lover, she could feel the scrape of the bandage across her palm. She ran her stony thumb over it, before lifting it to hover it at the space where her head, her mouth, may have once been. She was careful with that hand as we danced again.

The next day, Tammy Watts stole my lunch bag and dumped it in the school fountain. My sandwich was too soggy to hold itself together, the chocolate squares melting out into the water under the spring sun, and the fresh fruit reduced to mush. 

When I returned to my lover, she could feel the shake in my hands from the hunger, and when I put her stone hand to my stomach, she could feel it growl. My lover took the time to stop the dance and crouch down, her stony form groaning as it creased and scraped against itself. She ran her hands through the grass, and from where I crouched with her, I could see where the spring pollen had collected itself into every fold of her. Her absinthe green skin glimmered with the pale gold of it, dusting even the finest valleys within the battlements of her broken throat, leaving only her palms bare from where she held my hands. I didn’t like looking at her neck, as the pollen appeared so entrenched that I feared it’d permanently stain, and then, truly, there would be no place to put a head without rudely interrupting that claim of time. 

My lover lifted her hands. She had collected a small bushel of yellow dandelions. I remember reading, once, that dandelions were herbal and could be delicious if prepared correctly. We couldn’t cook out here, but she wanted me to eat. So I ate them. Next time, she’ll eat them too.

The following week, I was assigned to an environmental project with Tammy Watts. Because my family had a farm and lots of trees, she came to my house. She sneered prettily at our pantry and sniffed around the back porch. She didn’t even drop her backpack or take off her shoes; she marched after me like she was going to leave any second. I had my school bag too, but it had everything we needed.

“Is this really how you live?” Tammy asked. Her mouth, pink and esoterically charming with its uneven cupid’s bow, made a disappointing shape around the words.

“Lots of people live this way,” I replied.

“Whatever. Do you have the stuff for the thing?” She pointed at my old school bag.

“Yes,” I replied, “I can get the leaves. Tough trees out here.”

“Trees are just trees,” she enunciated. I shrugged. 

We passed a lot of trees. Tall, sinewy oak trees. Saturnine willows. Star magnolias fluffed with white blooms. We kept going until Tammy whined: “We’ve passed by so many! You’re doing this on purpose. Is this because you still can’t take a joke?”

“What joke?” I asked, “I don’t recall you ever making a joke.” We had entered the clearing. My aliferous lover was frozen in dance under a weeping cherry. Tammy crossed her arms. 

“You know what I mean…or, maybe not, I guess it’s too hard for you. It’s why no one wants to be your friend. This is stupid and you’re stupid.”

I dragged a nail over a loose thread in my strap. “I don’t need friends. I already have what I need.”

“Weirdos who no one wants to be friends with just say that to make themselves feel better. It’s okay. It can’t be helped.”

“You’re awful.”

“I’m not, you are.”

“Why, though? Why me?”

Tammy seemed to give it some actual thought. Then, “Because you’re ugly.”

It was a harrowing thing to be told by such a pretty face. The pretty face knew what she was talking about. And the association of those words with such a mouth made me hesitate in my plan above all else. But it was also, in a way, thrilling and magnetic. I opened my bag.

I said, “And you’re beautiful.”

Tammy’s lip curled derisively, and that was the last face she made before I stuck my father’s razor in her throat. It was so easy, like those times when I helped my mother cook Thanksgiving turkey and she let me stick the thermometer in the rich, chewy skin. Soft and pliable, but with the resistance inherent to life. Tammy’s mouth opened, but all that came out was a wheeze. She dropped, lying supine in the grass, the shadows of the glade dappling her waning face. I pulled out the hacksaw, now, and began to work at her neck. She was only able to slightly lift her hand once before dropping it for good. Her body was useless. Her head was necessary. 

It was a long and grueling task that left my hands raw and bloodied, my new dress a mess, and the grass clotting with blood. The spine was the hardest to cut. But I did it. And I brought the head over to my lover, who held out her arms like a mother waiting for her newborn. I carefully handed over Tammy’s head. My lover lifted the head and crowned her neck with it. She embraced me, and I, her, and finally got to kiss her newly red lips.

End.