Deep Cleaning Astringent

A particularly bad specimen, erupting from Jade’s skin this early March morning: going yellow at its outer edges, white in its horrible molten core. Right cheek: dead center. Claudia has been picturing placing a finger each side of the spot and pushing in all morning. 

It cleared up for everybody else (saltwater curling up off the docks and sanctifying their sad adolescent skin) but somehow Jade is twenty two and still riddled with acne. Claudia covets Jade’s ablutions and misses her own. A memory of Clean & Clear by the tap: a pinprick of pain: at the end, pus on her fingertips: her inside spilling outside. Now, though, they are on the grass, at the top of the hill where the city is just barely visible. An altitude where you could forget ever being in the city, but why would you want to? Claudia’s torso is cold where her weight presses into the grass. 

“Jade,” she wheedles at her best friend, “please, just let me do it.” 

With an elbow over her sea-glass eyes—flat on her back, basking—Jade sighs. As if Claudia never spoke, she says: “Heard it’s meant to stay sunny.” 

“It’ll be over before you know it, like.” 

“An open wound is what it’ll be.” 

The branches naked above their heads. The light coming through in one fell swoop. Elsewhere, the ocean pushing up against the shore. 

Claudia walks, alternately, her index and middle fingers up Jade’s warm shoulder and onto her face. 

She encroaches upon the inflamed skin. 

Jade screams. Hits her, hard. “Fuck off!” 

“Fucking hell.” Claudia curls in on herself. Agony in her wrist where Jade’s rings smacked against bone. From somewhere in the painless distance, Jade is laughing, her xylophone cackle disintegrating up into the sky. 

It burns. 

Claudia wants it to burn forever.