Hold me, now,

In your automatic embrace

In your automatic arms

Hold me, now,

In your automatic embrace

In your creaking, rusting arms.

The song is weird and strange, echoes of its noise brushing gently over me. I am too far away to hear the lyrics, but the noise is there, a different language. Andromeda sits on the step in front of me, hair like water hiding her face from my eyes. Her skin is glowing blue in the moonlight.

"We could play better than that, couldn't we?" she asks, chewing on a blade of grass.

"We play with our voices, though, not with instruments like theirs."

"It doesn't matter, Aja. That doesn't matter at all."

She turns and gently takes my head between her ivory milk palms, sweet scent like silver flower nectar dancing into my nostrils always coming from her. I stumble down the peeling painted steps, and my knees stick to the grass and dirt in the place before the steps begin, kneeling, worshipping Andromeda.

She turns me so that I am not facing her, and clamps my shoulders between two knees. Andromeda is strangely thin, her kneecaps like the face of the full moon through the white, white skin, taut and stretched above bones even whiter. Her fingers dig through my short red hair and over my ears, until I can hear nothing but her heartbeat, echoing through her wrists and drumming in tune with mine. I know this song.

red flowers in the corners of your eyes

diamond princess

you never had to die

living through the icy song

mimic of living

heart, my harp, play along

ruby nectar singing

silver tambourines hanging from your face

breaking like glass against the alabaster shore

you never had to live,

diamond princess, before...

silver spiderwebs wrapped your body

in a melodic embrace

and they told you

you would live forever

diamond princess

Andromeda's voice is a keening wail, octaves above my melody, enchanting the sound until the water dripping from the dewy leaves vibrates in ecstasy and my throat is hot with use. She is loud and she is still quiet; I am light and projecting and deep. The song is born from the frozen shards of moonlight, melted and beaming from my eyes and nose and ears and mouth.

The last echoes shimmer away from us, sweetly fading over the water seperating us from the heavy metal band. The lake is clear, even at night, and it fascinates me to watch the beams of moonlight sink beneath the surface and hit the very bottom depths.

Andromeda found me in the dankest and filthiest corner of a dying alley. I lived in a box with newspapers wrapped around my feet and blisters on my shoulders and breasts, dirty dirt sunk into my face and into my skin like a pigment. I ate food from the dumpster that was never emptied, with my face sunk into the rotting food scraps like a piglet.

She was a gypsy at the time, not a Roma, but a nomad, having no home and going from place to place on foot. She sold her music for her dinners and board. Her healing hands could stitch and splint and repair even the most painful of hurts.

After Andromeda found me, we had to shave my long, matted hair away because the roaches and the lice were laying their eggs in it and in my scalp. I cried. Andromeda just sighed, and shook her head, and dunked me under the lavendar and honeysuckle scented water, scrubbing me until I was too red and raw to cry, rubbing my body with oils and suds and making me eat hard vegetables raw to help clean and strengthen my teeth.

Andromeda dubbed me Aja. I have no memories of a mother.

I stand, and stretch my arms above my head. The candy lights of the city fleck the clouds above and make the sky glow a dull maroon over where the skyscrapers stand. My arms reach above the skyscrapers from where I stand. I have never seen a skyscraper up close. They seem so thin that I am sure that they must blow over in the strong winds.

Andromeda picks up her piece of grass and keeps chewing once more, smiling. The band across the lake has fallen silent.

"Go to bed, Aja. We're walking into the City tomorrow."

"Night, Mama."

"Night."

Andromeda does not mind that she is my Mama. I like Andromeda.

I lie in my bed, blue sheets pulled up to my chin, for what seems to be hours before the sleep finally drowns the curiosity and takes me away.