Flo Lee
Multiply &
Divide
These are the things I cannot forget. They crawl on my shoulders and keep me from spinning. They counter every energetic thing my brain can think to do. They keep my chin down. They keep my eyes small. They are the reason I might shudder when no one else is cold or choke when I'm taking a bath. In fact my mouth is dry right now because of them. They have nicknames. They gave themselves nicknames. I certainly wouldn't have. I really don't like them, not one bit. It's scary to admit because if they were to know what I said, there would be trouble. They would find ways to make trouble. As if things haven't been unpleasant already. It's because I can't erase them. So it's all wrapped up together like a giant ball of rubber bands. That's the kind of thing that they would love to bounce when I'm trying to sleep. They make puking noises when I try to eat. And they whisper calculus that I don't understand whenever I try to have sex. They're not fun. They're not friendly. And they're always here. I've lost skin. I’ve forgotten the past. I’ve watched my own ego shrivel and die. Really someone on the outside might look at them and say they are remarkable. A scientist might want to study them. A psychiatrist might want to study them. In fact, a psychiatrist has tried to study them. But I quit. They quit. They said fuck you. They wouldn't have it. They weren't about to be studied by anyone. They're best when they're invisible. They lose power in the light. Someone might say, "why don't you just turn on the lights?" It's not that easy. I don't have any lights. I've been in the dark for years. And that's why they're here. They represent the end of light. The end of love. The end of life. Because they're not only the things I can't forget; they are the things I can't say. It's not just that my mouth is dry. My tongue falls out. I can't speak. And when people look at me, they always look twice. They know I'm cute, but they can tell something's missing. They can see the emptiness in my face. The missing tongue. And instead of trying to speak to me, they don't. Or they become more scraps to be added to the things I can't forget because it doesn't end. They Just multiply. Each time someone recognizes that I'm suffering, they want to add to my suffering. They want to fill the empty space in my mouth. And that's what they do. And I wake up to the screaming of the only things that know how to make any noise at all.
Unforgettable
I don't know what it's like to be old. One of my favorite things about being young is that I can close my eyes and all the years between when I started and where I am now feel like they are an arm's length away. I can stretch my arms out and give my whole life a hug. That's such an advantage. Because sometimes it doesn't matter what's in the past. I can pull it close and examine the pieces. I can pick out something from when my mother had a cat and lived downtown. She named the cat Puppy. She thought she was so clever that she did it twice. I can hear her laughing. I know now that I don’t have her laugh, but back then I didn't know that. I just wanted to be like her. I wished I could have thought of such a clever name for a cat, and I've been trying to think of one ever since. But the memory is next to me. It sits up in front of me, and then it makes noises and I can hold it close. That's another sweet thing about being young. Because even the bad memories (like when puppy died and mom had to put him in a pillowcase and take him to the vet to be turned to ash), even these memories are better close than far. Because they're my memories. And it's my life. And I can't imagine what it would be like to reach back for a memory and see it disappear. How awful if it was too far away. It's like a child that's rushing towards the highway and you can't stop it. Disaster. I’m not living with disaster right now. Everything is still close. I can remember all the foods and all the television channels and every last vacation. I can remember listening to my parents fight in the living room or in the bedroom or in the car. I can remember listening to them make love. Horrible but wonderful. I remember pushing my sister down at the pool so that she scraped her knee so badly they had to take her to the hospital. I said I was sorry but really I wasn’t. I don't know why I didn't like her back then, but I know I like her now. I love being able to remember both of those feelings. The love and the hate. The good feelings and the bad feelings are still so close. Even the trauma. I remember the trauma. But one of the worst things about growing older isn't that you begin to live with the trauma; it's the discovery that everyone has trauma. What makes me so special? And that's when I can feel the past running towards the highway. And there are pieces and chunks that are going to be crushed. Things that I used to remember that one day I won't be able to remember. As I live in the present or it will get harder and harder to remember the past, I realize that getting older isn't so much about learning or growing… it's about forgetting. It's about losing the memories that once seemed so vivid that they could have been captured on a camera. I am able to study those pictures, recognizing every detail. But with age comes squinting. I will need readers. I will look at my sister and I won't remember why I used to hate her. That makes me mad. Because there was a reason I hated her even if it was a secret to her and to everyone. And one day, who knows when, I won’t know the secret either. And that feels like such an awful loss. I don’t hate her now, but I sure did when we were young. I had to come to terms with that. I had to find a way to bring my blood next to hers and roll on the floor with the cat. It scares me, but then I realize…. isn't that what getting older is all about? Mending fences. Smoothing things over? Forgetting everything that might have ever caused me pain? Isn't that what happens when you start to grow up? You forget it all and start over. You name a kitten Puppy, but you don’t remember why. You just smile with pride. What a clever thing. A cat named Puppy.
Short
I always wanted to be tall. I remember as a child I would look at the adults and think that I wanted to be just as tall as they are. Even at my youngest. I wanted it right now. It was a silly dream. I had more common sense than to believe I could actually sprout overnight, but the yearning was something else besides height. I think I wanted to be taller because I wanted to be bigger. I wanted to take up more space. If I were tall, people would see me. Finally. Of seven children, I was number six. My younger sister was beautiful, and I wasn't. And when I had to babysit her, I felt like I needed to protect her. I wanted to be her cage. I wanted her childhood to be light and full of all her favorite flavors of everything. But since I was short, it was hard. In fact she got taller than me rather quickly. It didn't stop me from attacking the boys who broke her heart. I let her sleep in my bed when she couldn't sleep in hers. I would sit there awake wishing I could be a better pillow. I saw how many times she would find the sharp things that I would hide from her. I tucked danger into cabinets, but I could never get up high enough. Her arms and legs were long. She could reach the things that hurt her. She drank them and she swallowed them and she ran them over her skin. I didn't know what to do. How could I possibly defend her? Too many times I had to let go and watch her throw herself into one hole after another. And no matter what she did to herself, she did it with such beauty. I never got taller. Today she's in rehab. Again. I'm her only emergency contact. I eat my lunch in the parking lot because I hate sitting in the hospital cafeteria. I keep my hand on my phone because even though I have the volume up, I still want to feel it vibrate when she needs me. I want to feel her need in my hand shaking me even if I happen to fall asleep.
I Came with
the House
You've got to let things come to you. You've got to put up with everything else and sit still long enough and keep your flashlight low until the thing that you're waiting to see starts to rustle. Then it will slowly sneak out into the middle, and it will come to you. I didn't always believe this. I wasn't raised to believe this. I lived in a house where everything should have happened yesterday. I lived in a house where people would yell. I lived where the volume for everything was always set at 10. If you didn't yell, you weren't going to be heard. There was a real risk that you could wind up starving to death. You might wind up locked out of the house and have to sleep in a shed in the backyard. Let me tell you, I've slept in that shed. It's quiet. And I wanted to stay there so badly. I wanted to leave them, but no one else did. I couldn't understand it. I assumed that I came with the house. They bought it the year I was born. I figured that they moved in and they looked in one of the closets and saw a baby and just decided to keep her. I don't think I was one of them. But I didn't rush out. I didn't run away. I waited. I knew something would come to me and it did. My father died. Look I loved my father like anyone loves her father, but honestly one less voice in the choir wasn't such a terrible thing (especially a choir that was so completely out of tune). When he died, there was movement. Like one of those little puzzles where you have to slide the pieces left or right and up and down in order to make the picture whole. Once he was gone, it got a lot easier to slide the pieces. Once the picture got clear, it was determined that I should go live with my grandparents. Now most old people are hard of hearing, but not my grandparents. You can whisper in their house and they'll hear what you're saying. And because of that they didn't shout. And they didn't play the television at the top of its voice. They could sit still. They left the door open until everyone came in from the car. This was new to me. These were my father's parents , and he had had a falling out with them. I can see why now. I thought I might have been found in the house, but I was sure that he was adopted. And actually it was true. He was. He had been the unwanted child of the woman who used to clean their home. She was unmarried and too young and didn't know enough English to survive. So they took her baby. With her consent, they gave him their name and a room in their home. Of course her mother kept working there so she got to see him until she met a man and got married and had a baby she wanted and moved away. She left him behind. He never knew she was his real mother. They thought about telling him later, but he was never quiet so they could never speak. And in their frustration they decided just to leave it alone. I sat quiet for hours, long enough for them to tell me his whole story. They told me everything about everything. It made sense to me because he wasn't a good man. Having such a wretched beginning explained a lot. To have a mother who would leave you for another man and another baby meant you didn't have a very good mother. And if you don't have a very good mother, well then you're not going to be a very good man. And that's exactly what it was. I went to the funeral. I watched everyone cry. I couldn't cry. Not for him. But I put my head down. How do you tell your family that you're glad your “father’s” dead? Once I moved in with my grandparents, I realized that this was a thought that wasn't really uncommon. In fact everyone who was a "relative" but not an actual relative was relieved that he was dead, too. The only people who truly missed him was my mother. And my siblings. The main problem with the story is that I actually am his daughter. I'm related to both of them. I'm not related to these grandparents. They could kiss me inappropriately and it wouldn't be illegal. Not that they will. They're not inappropriate. That's how I know they're not my relatives. They're actually nice people, even with the TV on mute.
The Death
of a Name
I'm not going to call to him. I'm not going to say his name. There's a marching band inside of me that wants to shout it, but I won't. I gave up his name. I sacrificed it. I buried it. I went into the backyard in the middle of the night, and I dug a hole where I put his name. I screamed it into the hole, and then I covered it up quickly. Now his name is dead. There's no marker. No one will ever know it's there. 100 years from now when the house has been sold 10 times, someone might want to put a garden in the backyard or build a pool. It's possible that as the workers dig they will come across his name. And it will blare at them. It will shock them. They might even drop their tools. The name is dead, so that might scare them. I killed his name, and I buried it alive. His fingerprints are all over me. And all over the memories of the secrets that he made me keep. There's the "talk" that he gave me almost every day about what it meant to be a good girlfriend. The checklist. The contract. I listened and I signed it. I sat with it everyday. I made his words my words. They replaced my words. I had a transfusion of words. And for many months I didn't even know how to say my own name. He never said my name. I may have buried his alive, but he tortured my name. He locked it in the dark closet without any food or water. And my name just slowly withered. But what he didn't do was kill it. That was his biggest mistake. You see, I know that you need to kill a name if you want it gone. My name came back. Slowly. I remembered it. I would hear words spoken by strangers, and then it would slowly dawn on me that they weren't just speaking words. They were saying my name. My real name. Not the name that he tattooed to my forehead. Not the name that he burnt into my skin. Not the name that he would spill on me like someone's drunk uncle. He was a careless boyfriend. Selfish, too. I must have thought of a hundred ways to plunge a knife through his heart. To fill his lungs with poison. To drown his face in the toilet. He was a drunk. A liar. And he stole my name. But when I got it back, my name had only one thing to say. She said, "You're free." And I felt it inside. It was true. In fact my name reminded me that she had always been my name. I had never actually lost her. And that's when I started planning the murder of his name. His name was weak. It had no defense. It had never faced any real adversity except for the fact that it was stuck to him. And so when I took his name, it was an easy job. I didn't wear a bandit’s mask. He never saw me coming. I didn't bother trying to tie him up. I lied to him and told him we were going to a party. When we got into the backyard under the moon, he still had no idea. The last thing I remember him doing was trying to seduce me. His seductions never worked. The only thing I had ever felt for him was guilt. I hit his name on the back of the head with a shovel. Everything went black. I put it in the hole, and I screamed. And then I went back inside and I made myself the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich ever. That's when I had the idea that maybe I would be okay without him. It was really a good sandwich.
Not
Sisters
"Really?" She said, because she wasn't believing what they were telling her. Her friends. Their faces were flat and cool. If they had emotions, they were left back in the car. And the three of them were sitting in the McDonald's so close to the playhouse where all three of them had once played. It had always been the three. The two sisters plus her. Their homes were close. They didn't even need to ride bikes. The sister's home was laid out like a mirror to hers. So it was fun to play in the other home. It was fun to live in reverse for a while. And now they were telling her that the mirror was being put away. The street between their homes would become a river, and there was no way to cross it now. The sisters told her that they were finished. They were done. They no longer wanted to be friends with her. She had told them everything. There was nothing that they didn't know about her, and now they were leaving her. It was worse than a breakup. It was like being killed. The chicken nuggets. Diet Coke. This would be their last meal together. The sisters told her that she was a liability. The dark corners of their school were clogged with people like her. They were imperfect. The sisters were a plus two on her family vacation and they had visited her when she had chicken pox or mono. Their mother knew her favorite foods and her father kept an EpiPen for them just in case. Her mother never forgot the girls’ birthday or what colors looked best as ribbon in their hair. They didn't need a mirror. They just took a seat across from each and stared. I guess they got tired of her individuality. She was single. Even if she had a boyfriend she was single. Because she was deep down alone. And when she found out that it didn't matter how many boyfriends she had, she was always going to be alone she told them. She thought she could tell them. And she said it to them, and they listened and that's when they started to think rethink things. Because if she was going to be the kind of girl who didn't have boyfriends, she was going to wind up in the cobwebs. She would be one of the quiet ones who lived under the stairs. Who ate lunch someplace else because the place where you're supposed to eat lunch just wasn't a place where they were welcome anymore. So the sisters decided it was time to reject her. Here at the McDonald's. Here at the place where they had had birthday parties for years. "Why?" She asked them, but she knew the answer. After all, she was their best friend. They didn't say anything. They did their telepathic magic trick and then when they looked back at her she could read their minds, too. She loved them both. And maybe that was the problem. Maybe they were afraid that they loved her, too. It didn't matter now. She hadn't planned to eat all the nuggets, but now she was going to. Usually she would leave two. One for each. But now she ate them all. Not like a little lady but like a man who's hungry.
Author: Derek Letsch
Artist: Flo Lee
Artist Bio
Florence Lee & co was developed in 2018 from Flo's passion for anything and everything creative.
In a short space of time Flo has had great success. She has been featured in print and online publications, had work published in the Portraits for NHS heroes book, been interviewed for a podcast and CASS Art blog, held small solo exhibitions, collaborated with interiors enthusiasts, had work hand selected for advertising campaigns and TV and designed a debut album cover.
Her work has been collected and commissioned within the UK but also as far afield as Texas, with often her clients/customers obtaining multiple pieces of her work.