MAY 2019
7 OR 8 THINGS
CHARLOTTE VAN WERVEN
7 OR 8 THINGS
CHARLOTTE VAN WERVEN
Tattoo
It’s not that she had a tattoo, because she never did, but one day when she was eight she was walking down the boardwalk at Boulevard Park with her mom and she saw a twenty-something couple rollerblading toward the shore holding hands. The twenty-something girl had wild curls pulled into a lose bun and was wearing a crop top that rested above a bellybutton ring and a spinning daisy tattoo. The glimpse she caught was entirely accidental, and as her cheeks turned rose, she glanced up at her mom and told herself that someday she would get a daisy, too.
Rat pee
When she was nineteen she got a second job at the pet store downtown because the heater in their house broke. Her sister had thrown a shoe at her and said she had better get another job or else they’d be out on the streets. They would have had enough money to fix it—but that was before they had to pay for a funeral. She cursed the casket catalogue as she rinsed rat pee off her hands.
Bees
When people die, flowers are like an all-you-can-eat buffet—eternal, forsaken, indigestible, something you never want to touch again. After the funeral, she got stung by a bee refuging in a bouquet of white roses. It was hiding behind the card that said, “We’re praying for you.” Thirty minutes later, she was in the ER downing a lecture about the proper way to use an EpiPen. She was never stung again.
Orchestra
Sixteen minutes after the conductor entered, during the intro to a piece by Bach she didn’t know, she walked out of the theatre and ordered a pomegranate gelato, instead. The girl behind the counter itched her ear against her shoulder as she counted back the change. After eating as slowly as she could, she made her way back to the theatre and thought about the girl, who decidedly smelled like citrus were those daisy earrings? She arrived ten minutes before the show ended, clapped for her sister until her palms stung, and told her the piece by Bach was her favorite.
Prestidigitation
She hated spelling tests more than anything else. It was probably because when she was two years old her mom used to sing to her, You are t-r-o-u-b-l-e. When she was eleven she learned the word “prestidigitation” after hearing it in a movie. She never forgot it, not once; not even when she pulled her handkerchief out of her own sleeve at her mother’s funeral.
The scar
Once—it was the anniversary of her mother’s passing—she caught her finger on the thorn of a rose in a bouquet she was hurling into a dumpster. The thorn got stuck, and when she pulled it out with her sister’s tweezers, her skin split further. The scar was on her pointer finger, in the shape of a “V.”
Three
She never knew her dad, but she was told her middle name, Rosie, was from him. Before she was born he would hum her Cracklin’ Rosie and rub her mother’s feet.
Two
Her mom died the winter she turned nineteen. Her sister cried the most.
One
On Thursdays she and her girlfriend baked banana bread for ladies at the rest home while listening to classical music on their radio. On Saturdays they had breakfast with her sister—coffee steam twirling around the flower stems in the center of the table, an offering for tomorrow.
It’s not that she had a tattoo, because she never did, but one day when she was eight she was walking down the boardwalk at Boulevard Park with her mom and she saw a twenty-something couple rollerblading toward the shore holding hands. The twenty-something girl had wild curls pulled into a lose bun and was wearing a crop top that rested above a bellybutton ring and a spinning daisy tattoo. The glimpse she caught was entirely accidental, and as her cheeks turned rose, she glanced up at her mom and told herself that someday she would get a daisy, too.
Rat pee
When she was nineteen she got a second job at the pet store downtown because the heater in their house broke. Her sister had thrown a shoe at her and said she had better get another job or else they’d be out on the streets. They would have had enough money to fix it—but that was before they had to pay for a funeral. She cursed the casket catalogue as she rinsed rat pee off her hands.
Bees
When people die, flowers are like an all-you-can-eat buffet—eternal, forsaken, indigestible, something you never want to touch again. After the funeral, she got stung by a bee refuging in a bouquet of white roses. It was hiding behind the card that said, “We’re praying for you.” Thirty minutes later, she was in the ER downing a lecture about the proper way to use an EpiPen. She was never stung again.
Orchestra
Sixteen minutes after the conductor entered, during the intro to a piece by Bach she didn’t know, she walked out of the theatre and ordered a pomegranate gelato, instead. The girl behind the counter itched her ear against her shoulder as she counted back the change. After eating as slowly as she could, she made her way back to the theatre and thought about the girl, who decidedly smelled like citrus were those daisy earrings? She arrived ten minutes before the show ended, clapped for her sister until her palms stung, and told her the piece by Bach was her favorite.
Prestidigitation
She hated spelling tests more than anything else. It was probably because when she was two years old her mom used to sing to her, You are t-r-o-u-b-l-e. When she was eleven she learned the word “prestidigitation” after hearing it in a movie. She never forgot it, not once; not even when she pulled her handkerchief out of her own sleeve at her mother’s funeral.
The scar
Once—it was the anniversary of her mother’s passing—she caught her finger on the thorn of a rose in a bouquet she was hurling into a dumpster. The thorn got stuck, and when she pulled it out with her sister’s tweezers, her skin split further. The scar was on her pointer finger, in the shape of a “V.”
Three
She never knew her dad, but she was told her middle name, Rosie, was from him. Before she was born he would hum her Cracklin’ Rosie and rub her mother’s feet.
Two
Her mom died the winter she turned nineteen. Her sister cried the most.
One
On Thursdays she and her girlfriend baked banana bread for ladies at the rest home while listening to classical music on their radio. On Saturdays they had breakfast with her sister—coffee steam twirling around the flower stems in the center of the table, an offering for tomorrow.
Charlotte Van Werven recently graduated with a bachelor's degree in creative writing, and lives in Salem, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Into the Void, Her Story, Gold Man Review, and Columbia College Literary Review.