A Sculpture’s Sorrowful Fable
By Racquel Lee
Winner of the 2025 Prose Award
A wide beveled-edged chisel chips at your imperfect fissures, at the sweet crinkle of your lip, at the smooth curve of your eyelids that I sometimes wish would flutter closed just to prove you’re real. Your skin cracks and crumbles in chunks that sway to the floor like ash to the ceramic, flakes to the foundation. I want you to be the epitome of a glamorous visage, a body basked in the most splendorous of jewels and gems, a face bloomed from the very vigor of God’s fingertips if he were really such a depraved existence. I want you to be a ripe, decadent thing, a sculpture revered, a sculpture envied. Your skin is that of shimmering amber. Your hair is that of short black coils of slumbering smoke. Your eyelashes are long and curved, while your eyes are slender in shape.
That’s what you embody, my sweet Amelia. If you were real, you would be stared at with the most awed of gazes. Your steps would blossom the greatest of imaginings to the deepest of resentments. Your parents were of the high class, I’m sure, but you had to earn your way into their approval, their affection, their status. You were a painter, dabbling your canvases in the attic with the deepest of emotion your hands could muster. They would ache and tremble, and you would cry and cradle them like they were a baby startled awake from pestering pain. You would cradle them softer than your parents ever could before getting back to your craft, pestering persistently at that very same pain.
You didn’t have many companions, but you realized you preferred being alone. No one stuck along long enough to crack open the fruits of yourself, drink down the juices and enjoy the taste. And you couldn’t be bothered to find someone who would put in the effort. You thought it was better that way. You convinced yourself it was.
But life got lonelier, and your parents got harsher. You painted your sorrows away and realized how alone you truly were. You decided, after a while, to just mold your picture into something people wanted to know. You went to parties of the rich, went on rooftops and smoked whilst you enjoyed the view. You took bold sips of alcohol, preening at the boisterous “oohs” of noisy partygoers, internally blanching at the taste. You laughed at jokes that didn’t hit the mark on comical timing. You took long and laborious breaths of a sky-blue bong, sniffed lines of powdery white, popped pills and got high off the attention.
But the only thing real about those instances were your growing affection for the substances you managed to snag. People were superficial at best, borderline manipulative at worst. Guys wanted only one thing, and you promised yourself that was a line you would never cross.
You thought it was hopeless, a fruitless endeavor until one day, you found a girl smoking alone on the same rooftop you frequented, your cigarette readied in your fingertips. Her skin was of a beautiful shade of bronze, her hair consisting of long braids that reached the curve of her back. A few bandages painted her skin, but you closed the door to the rooftop before she could see you. You ran home, heart fluttering, and you rushed to the attic, hastily grabbing all your supplies.
You imagined what would happen if she did happen to see you, if you hadn’t rushed out of there with your tail between your legs.
She would turn around, see you, flicker her eyes over your frame and offer you a light. You would step closer, placing the tip of your cigarette within that fumbling flame before taking a long drag. You would both lean on the railing, watch as the sun slowly made its descent.
The other girl would introduce herself, shaking your hand in a friendly grip. You would say your name was Amelia and offer a similar squeeze. You might have caught a glimpse of her at one of those parties once or twice.
You guys would converse on random topics; favorite shows, favorite brand of cigarettes, favorite times to get high, favorite colors and so on. You would talk forever, blab on and on, and for once you would believe that you had made a true friend.
You don’t know how long you stayed in that attic, painting the back of that girl, but it was almost euphoric, calming. You didn’t feel that familiar pain in your fingers.
You went up to that rooftop again, and she was there, but you didn’t have the heart to go up to her. You ran back to your little attic once again, imagining:
She was enough for you. You would go to that rooftop almost every day. You guys would text and FaceTime constantly, meet up at parties, sneak in your attic to paint and whisper in hushed tones of restraint. She would never be good at it, but she would always compliment yours to the point it would make your heart giddy. She would be more of a writer, and she would bless your eyes with poems and stories you couldn’t help but indulge in. She would inspire you and you would inspire her. You would smoke together, share cigarettes, pop pills until incoherence.
She would tell you of her rocky life back home, of the bruises that would sometimes latch onto her skin. You would offer your place as refuge, and you would reassure her your parents were barely around anymore anyway.
You went back to that rooftop, back to that attic, back to your vices.
Something would change one day, however, after two years of you girls being companions. You both would be in a frenzied-high, conversing like usual. Your head would be on her shoulder as you listened to her drones of what happened that day. You wouldn’t be able to describe exactly what feeling bubbled over you, and maybe it was the high, but you had looked up at her and found her so enchanting. Before you even knew what you were doing, you softly pressed your lips on hers and absolutely loved the taste of it.
She would freeze, be shocked, before slowly kissing you back. Your heart would be happy over the reciprocation. You wouldn’t know how long you girls sat there, kissing each other until your lungs turned numb, but it was amazing, a feeling you never thought you would understand.
Your relationship would blossom into something foreign, brand new. Random kisses and hugs would be added to the usual routine. You would kiss her in the attic, and she would laugh as she stained your cheeks with paint. You would cuddle on the rooftop, sharing the smoke of a cigarette or a pill between your lips. She would drive you to beaches, to mountaintops, to valleys that inspired your canvases. She would write love poems, romances inspired by you and you would always get flustered at how beautifully she described you. You would paint her and watch as her smile blossomed into adoration as you gave her the gift.
But that isn’t what happened. You had only watched her from the slight crack in the door and just imagined and imagined and imagined. You were too scared to go up to her and your delusions began to run deeper in your drug-frenzied highs.
And one day, when you finally opened the door fully, she was nowhere to be seen. You wished you could’ve gotten her name, could’ve found out what she liked, what her favorite color was, what she was actually into. You cried your hardest that day, realizing how stupid you were. You went home, traversed to the attic, and painted a picture of her.
You would bring it with you, hoping she was there. You thought this would be a good opportunity to finally talk to her, not hinder yourself under your own pathetically-forged delusions. And she was, but not in the way you wanted, never in the way you wanted.
She was dangerously close to the edge of the roof, eyes dull and vacant. She turned to your form, startled, irritated. You called out to her in alarm, hoping to stop her from what she was planning on doing. She would question why you finally decided to open the door now after all this time, when she was hoping you wouldn’t. She knew you were watching her.
You would say you’ve always wanted to talk to her, be her friend, but you were scared, so unreasonably terrified of breaching a territory you’ve never traversed. You would slowly edge closer as you spiked your heart out to her.
You would ask her to come down, saying you painted a picture of her, saying that for the first time in awhile, painting felt freeing, not tiring, not a means of escape.
She would listen, and she would smile such a tired, precious thing. She would let you take her hand, but she wouldn’t let you pull her away from the edge.
Instead, she would squeeze your hand in a tight reassuring grip that wrapped its warmth around your palm, had it pulsating in heat. She would ask you to fall with her, let the reins of gravity pull you down to the ground’s sturdy surface.
You would fall with her, feel the air push against your limbs. Or maybe you wouldn’t.
Maybe, you’d convince her to stay, convince her that life wasn’t the ache that kept itching within your fingers.
But I think you’d fall. I think you would decide to take that treacherous dive to the heavens below.
Your eyes blinked as I ran my hands through the wetness of your cold hard cheek to the softness of my own.
I smiled, happy at how far this fable flowed.
“No need to cry, Amelia,” I would say and hope you got the message.