Glimmer

By Mar Álvarez

What is the difference between inheritance and heirloom? What is our lot in life? 

The last thing she said to me was that I needed to get some sun. Her eyes drifting towards the popcorn ceiling, globs dried just as they were about to drop, frozen in time.

She couldn’t help it, by gift or personal acquisition, the glimmer was with her for so long it turned from skill to compulsion. Like a gnat burrowing into overripe fruit, her meticulous mind was fertile ground.

It began with fixing her gaze to take the world in. With eyes everyone got lost in she saw what others couldn’t and took note. A compulsion of love and loathing, the gaze allowed her to exist in between what was and what could be. To see leeway in what was presented as immutable. She honed it endlessly, reliable and unyielding. 

In this space of liminality she eyed the possibilities; then took action. Everyone could see what the glimmer brought: accent cushions in rooms once cold and unforgiving, things moved around again and again until they were just right, perfect french braids, the newest kitchen gadget, a working knowledge of medical literature even after retirement, encouragement when needed. 

Those lucky enough to learn its mechanisms, however, know that the glimmer is ever-expanding and does most of its work internally. The gaze eventually turns inward and the urge to prune and prod until your hands are raw is easy to give into, wounds festering with no time to scab.

From one to four to six, it latches on if you get too close. You begin to exist in the in-between space, to see potential and shortcomings hand in hand. Slowly, it is you who buys the accent cushions, turns things over and over in your head, feels naked without earrings. You who prunes and prods and encourages. You who fears the glimmer latching on to those who will come after you. 

So I gripped her hands, always a few degrees cooler than mine, when she said my skin was too pale. Her body swayed as she tried uselessly to lift herself up. The fluorescent light made her eyes look bigger than ever and they fluttered slowly from the ceiling to me; holding my gaze. Her long fingers squeezed my palm, the glimmer now mine to keep.