accumulated dust

I give it up

[Image: A woman lays her legs straight out in front of her, clad in white tights and white ribbed socks, across her floral bedspread. A coral powder blush compact rests open beside her and she buffs a makeup brush against her knees. putting blush on my white tights because i could explode tomorrow so why not be cute. The video cuts a bunch of clips together, the same moment from slightly different distances, different patterns of application: swiping up and down over her kneecap, tapping the brush straight down at a 90 degree angle, swirling, blending out the edges. She knocks her knees together and curls her wrist and hand around them, newly shy, rocking them back and forth.]

[Image: Someone posts a film still of a man in a white button down standing beside a fountain. Between his hands, he rests a cardboard box across the concrete ledge. Its sides stretch and give way to the avalanche of glimmering coins he pours into the water. Please please please let me get what I want, the added caption reads and most of the replies complete the lyric in all caps, LORD KNOWS IT WOULD BE THE FIRST TIME. Years ago, my grandmother gave me a collection of silver clip-on earrings. Smooth rounds of sterling, or wonky abstract domes; some look like they’ve been woven into themselves and some are simple tabs, rectangles rounded at the corners; some curve downward and underneath my earlobes protectively; one pair looks like two anthills, clusters of tiny pebbles. They live in a small wooden shadow box hung on the wall above my dresser, angled toward the corner so it can’t be opened without taking it down. Someone in the replies implores, I promise you the wish you make after throwing a coin at Fontani di Trevi will come true, Mine took 3 years. I cradle my own box of coins.]

[Image: On TikTok, a girl with a dark overgrown pixie cut reaches forward as she presses record. A silver “Return To Tiffany & Co.” toggle necklace is tucked beneath the collar of her short sleeved white button up. Leave it to me to slut out a song from 1944, the overlaid text reads. The room is nearly empty and the white ceiling is scattered with what looks like mold; it curves onto the walls, around two small framed pieces of art, around a doorless closet with nothing inside. A bookshelf is bare beyond a glass vase with a rounded base and skinny neck, holding a stem with dry salmon-colored leaves. The girl turns around, exposing the white string tied into a bow behind her back, cinching the shirt around her waist. I give it up too easily, her voice comes in, backed by a piano, bass, and clarinet, revising the lyrics of a jazz standard first sung by Sinatra but—I think—perfected by Chet Baker. The girl walks towards the back of the room, past a low coffee table with an antique metal fan which has visibly disturbed the table’s accumulated dust. She steps up onto a small wooden chest, placing her hands at first, to steady herself, on top of a dark gray speaker. Turned sideways from the camera, she wears a pair of white cotton hot pants over white tights with a black piano key print stretching up her legs. I do it on the first date, her cover song continues. She stands up fully before lifting her arms into the air and arching slightly backwards, bending one knee upwards like a jazz flamingo. She lowers one arm, then her leg, and then the other arm. She holds her hands with flexed wrists by her hips. She tips her torso forward, sticking out her butt until she loses her balance for a moment and jolts upright again just as the video turns black and white and the beat drops to a brooding synth remix. I give it up, give it up, the song repeats. She tugs at the hem of her shirt because it’s ridden up a little at the armpits and adjusts her feet, turning to face the camera; her toes hang off the edge of her makeshift stage. I give it up, give it up. She traces the back of her hands up the sides of her torso until they frame her face.]