“No! I’m going to help you!”

“This is mine!” 

“But it’s—”

The girl groped the knife on a shelf just under the counter and quickly withdrew it from its hiding place. She flashed it at him. It shone in the dim shop light.

“Leave!”

A tension, augmented by the bellowing opera, hung in the air. Ryan gulped as his squinty eyes dropped to the floor. The knife in Sirlia’s quivering hand wavered. Defeated again, Ryan headed out of the cheese shop.

“I love you, Sirlia,” he murmured before completely vanishing.

Sirlia, of course, did not respond. She merely caught the blue of Ryan’s shirt blend in with the blueness of the outside. For a second at least, everything seemed blue.

Sirlia let out the breath she had been holding and placed the knife on its respective shelf. Then she rested her sweet face on the counter, rubbing her left cheek against the cheddar. The sharp scent she knew so well did not comfort her during her loss. Instead, she sang along to the music blasting from the ancient phonograph for a few minutes before finally dancing out into the street. But first, Sirlia pocketed the squished cheese rabbit. It stuck to the inside of her plain cotton dress, a costume so unfitting for such a skillful ballerina, but one appropriate for the daughter of a man and woman who owned a quaint cheese shop.

This time, Sirlia did not dance out of mirth but rather in mourning. Instead of issuing quick kicks or cheerfully flailing her arms, Sirlia floated as aimlessly as a dandelion seed. She had murdered her rabbit before she had even cut its from its parmigiana prison. 

“Abortion,” she reasoned.

For hours, Sirlia wandered. Used to their daughter’s frequent disappearances, Sirlia’s parents did not ask where she had gone. She ventured into construction sites, playgrounds, schoolyards, cement covered squares, and any part of the city open to her entry. Colors and noises flew around her but none of them could arrest her attention. Never before had Sirlia destroyed one of her cheese pets, so now she grieved the grief of inexperience. 

No one dared speak to the long faced girl. Some, because they noticed her crippleness and knew not how to respond; others because they revered the melancholy poetry of her dance.

Finally, Sirlia reached a mural at the edge of the city, as far from the cheese shop as one could get while still remaining within the city limits. The mural, painted by local students, depicted the entire scope of the universe as viewed by God or some other fortunate being. Smears of galaxies melted into one another. Planets’ shadows overlapped. Earth, in its mix of blue and green, suspended itself in a lonely corner. 

Sirlia stared at the off-white moon sticking loyally beside Earth. In it, she saw Ryan’s pockmarks and shuddered. Yet a second later, she half-grinned and whispered, “Not even this pretty mural does a justice to what I know lies in the sky.”

The girl caressed the moon with fingers that smelled of cheese. It felt like nothing, just flatness. Nonetheless, Sirlia’s right hand crept into her pocket and tenderly pinched the mangled cheddar rabbit. Then she bound the rabbit to the moon in the mural, gently smoothing it over so it would stay. Sirlia kissed the rabbit, leaving the imprint of the lips Ryan achingly wanted to touch, and shed a single tear. 

Slowly, the crippled girl slumped down to the sidewalk, gazing at the pathetic creature until rain began to fall. But Sirlia closed her eyes and fell asleep in the nakedness of the street without witnessing her cheese rabbit melt. The city continued with its colors and noise, its noise and colors.