Mudflowers by Aley Waterman

Author:Aley Waterman [Waterman, Aley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / LGBTQ+ / General
ISBN: 9781459751545
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2023-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

I read the message over and over again. Then I wrote Alex:

Hi Alex.

Sorry I’ve been quiet for so long, I’ve been needing to protect my heart. I think you and Maggie should be together, if that’s what you want. I’ll be back in a week. It will be weird to see you guys and I don’t know if it will feel easy but I’m up for trying. I miss you. I don’t trust you in a logistical way rn but I trust you in a fundamental way that has to do with your soul. I’ll talk to you soon.

I spent the next couple of days avoiding Lionel and quietly moving between my bedroom and the studio where I was doing the glass mosaic. While I didn’t complete the whole project, it was about 80 percent done, which was likely more than I would have completed in Canada. Residencies were good for working, but not necessarily in a peaceful oasis way like I had thought, and more in a prison sort of way where you’re like, Well what else am I going to do in here?

On my third to last night in the art castle, from my bedroom window I saw Benoit walking through the garden. He pressed his fingers against the mysterious flowers planted in the snowy hill, and I wondered whether it was painful to see something thrive despite its context, as a person on the brink of having no context at all. I walked down to the garden and found him farther away, near the chicken coop, feeding the tiny baby chicks. He was pulling little pieces of food from his coat pocket and inserting them directly into the mouths of the fuzzy chicks, the softest little creatures in the whole world who had no idea about either of us or our flaws.

I’m sorry I called you a rapist, I said. I don’t think …

He put his hand up to stop me and smiled a tiny bit. Then he resumed feeding the chicks, cooing at them gently. I felt in that moment that we had both become symbols to each other and that time was running out. He was looking for some final instances of beauty and would find none between us.

On my way back to my room, I stopped at the two red flowers I had been eyeing, and it struck me that despite all of my time wondering about them, I had never investigated them up close. When I touched the petal as I had seen Benoit do, I was surprised to realize that they were plastic flowers flecked in dirt, and up close they didn’t actually look real at all. The red petals were synthetic, fading on the edges, and the green stem was made of a hard plastic, like the type of fake flower you would get at Dollarama. They were resilient.

I messaged Maggie back:

Maggie.

I’m sorry about your house. It turns out that Lionel won’t be coming back to Canada. If you want to stay in his room for a while, you can.

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