The Petals of Your Eyes
by Aimee Parkinson
an excerpt from the novel published by Starcherone Books | May 13, 2014

Captured girls are kept in cabinets with curiosities. One is my sister, and the other is my lover. They feel the chill of glass jars on their flesh, never knowing what’s inside. I know. Glass cools their thighs, and they keep wondering about the objects. I’ve been where they are and have seen what they have seen. I’ve seen too much, things I wish I didn’t remember. Those things become a part of me, going deep, trapped in my mind. Girls in the theater, arms and legs posed, held in position with narrow flesh-colored straps, their only concealment is the flowers over their faces. Try to see me through the petals of their eyes.
Like them, I have been exhibited.
Each day is a performance. The house and its cabinets cage us. The director has taken us to this country of mansions overlooking the jungle. None of us speaks the language. Beyond houses crowded over the hills, we wait. Children with flowers over their faces answer to the names of the flowers they wear.
My sister is the gardenia. I am the rose. We bloom. See the skin through the petals of our eyes? Petals fall. Women give us new masks of flowers. “Rose, Rose,” they say, “stop scratching the petals of your eyes.”
“Sorry,” I whisper, adjusting my beautiful mask in the mirror. The red and pink petals are layered so that the lighter petals call attention to my mouth. Eyeholes are framed in petal wings. The pattern of my mask resembles a butterfly flying. I gaze into the mirror long and hard, reminding myself I must forget my other name, the house where I once lived, and the faces of my parents. My parents had blue-gray eyes like the sea seen from the ship where I was taken. I am the rose. Only the rose. No one else.
Each girl becomes one with her mask, to be sold. I have been bought many times, like most of the older children. No one’s daughter is seventeen, and she looks like a tiny woman with a narrow waist, slender hips, and heavy rounded breasts. Her breasts are giant and bell-shaped with enormous bright pink nipples that appear swollen and jiggle when she walks. She is the only actor who doesn’t wear a mask. I love her dark eyes, her dramatically arched brows, and the long chestnut curls cascading down her back. I run my fingers gently through her curls and want to be like her, but I am fourteen, short and blond with a plump body and flat chest. I look like an overgrown and awkward toddler, my body burdened by baby fat from all the milk I drink. I look nothing like her.
With a crown of strawberry-blond hair, my little sister—the gardenia—is only eight. She says she wants to be the rose.
“Hush, hush,” no one’s daughter says to us as she shoves us back into the cabinets. “The new director is coming with trainers.”
The trainers watch as designers and dressers help the photographers take pictures of girls inside cabinets. The trainers arrange us, tying our legs open, adjusting the straps so that our limbs move like string puppets. “Arch back,” the choreographer says. “Lean forward. Scooch. Hips titled. Higher. High!”
Like them, I have been exhibited.
Each day is a performance. The house and its cabinets cage us. The director has taken us to this country of mansions overlooking the jungle. None of us speaks the language. Beyond houses crowded over the hills, we wait. Children with flowers over their faces answer to the names of the flowers they wear.
My sister is the gardenia. I am the rose. We bloom. See the skin through the petals of our eyes? Petals fall. Women give us new masks of flowers. “Rose, Rose,” they say, “stop scratching the petals of your eyes.”
“Sorry,” I whisper, adjusting my beautiful mask in the mirror. The red and pink petals are layered so that the lighter petals call attention to my mouth. Eyeholes are framed in petal wings. The pattern of my mask resembles a butterfly flying. I gaze into the mirror long and hard, reminding myself I must forget my other name, the house where I once lived, and the faces of my parents. My parents had blue-gray eyes like the sea seen from the ship where I was taken. I am the rose. Only the rose. No one else.
Each girl becomes one with her mask, to be sold. I have been bought many times, like most of the older children. No one’s daughter is seventeen, and she looks like a tiny woman with a narrow waist, slender hips, and heavy rounded breasts. Her breasts are giant and bell-shaped with enormous bright pink nipples that appear swollen and jiggle when she walks. She is the only actor who doesn’t wear a mask. I love her dark eyes, her dramatically arched brows, and the long chestnut curls cascading down her back. I run my fingers gently through her curls and want to be like her, but I am fourteen, short and blond with a plump body and flat chest. I look like an overgrown and awkward toddler, my body burdened by baby fat from all the milk I drink. I look nothing like her.
With a crown of strawberry-blond hair, my little sister—the gardenia—is only eight. She says she wants to be the rose.
“Hush, hush,” no one’s daughter says to us as she shoves us back into the cabinets. “The new director is coming with trainers.”
The trainers watch as designers and dressers help the photographers take pictures of girls inside cabinets. The trainers arrange us, tying our legs open, adjusting the straps so that our limbs move like string puppets. “Arch back,” the choreographer says. “Lean forward. Scooch. Hips titled. Higher. High!”

No one’s daughter explains. The photographs of girls inside cabinets are a lure. Tourists from other countries take the bait. After a series of payments and interviews, new clients must go through background checks and buy special tickets to become members of the audience. Then, gaining the privileges of regular theatergoers, they go backstage to visit the actors in their rooms. They get to choose which girl to remove from the cabinets or may ask to climb inside with the girl. Some of theatergoers like to view dead girls in the cabinets, to untie the straps from dead girls’ legs and arms and hold the dead while examining their bodies. And some of them like to keep a living girl locked inside with a dead girl, flower masks still covering faces.
Not just anyone is allowed to hold us—only those who follow the patron’s rules and pay the money.
Pay enough money to the right person and travel for hours across several borders, and you’ll find me and my sister with no one’s daughter in this secret theater where white flowers sway. Restless rivers nestle deep valleys. Miles away from desert caves and cities of the sea, misty mountains rise. Mountain vines hide the theater’s gates, the bars over the windows glimpsed through cracks in the cabinet doors.
Vines tangle like the hair of giants. Despite the large insects that glitter like black jewels in the vines, little hands move through window bars. Even now, my fingers are attempting to untangle pointy emerald leaves sweating milk in the night.
I touch no one’s daughter—her bony shoulders, her pointy elbows, her dancer’s legs—and the milk sticks to her silky thighs. We rub the milk in between our legs, and it tingles there. No one else here knows what we do with the milk from the vines, rubbing it all over our skin like lotion. She laughs as I lick the milk from her lips. I rest my head on her belly, fingers sticky. I cradle her large breasts in my hands, comparing her breasts to mine and wondering when mine will grow. She kisses me hard and allows me to suckle her. The milk from the vines tastes of mint and lavender and lemon and mimosa blossoms and pine mixed with soap. But the milk from her breasts is rich, salty, and a little sour like homemade cheese. Her milk is the reason I’m getting fatter while all the other actors are getting thinner. The night isn’t as long as it seems. By dawn, we are shivering in each other’s arms, legs entangled as she whispers about the leaves. I try to move against her, wrestling with her, but she stops me because of the voices in the hall. Sister is still sleeping, and the red sun is rising.
Milk leaves sway in vine-netted trees. Snakes slither in swarms rolled into balls, tangling in sun like twine in the mating season. Vines hide nests. Birds also meet in the vines, and sometimes the snakes swallow birds along with their eggs. If you capture a big snake and cut it open, you might find little snakes living inside. You might release frogs and birds still breathing inside the snake, stunned creatures curled in final heartbeats, devoured lizards awakening outside the belly.
Birds eat lizards leaping along leaves. Petals sway. Shivering, white flowers open like the hands of children. Bees and black butterflies hover over ivory petals uncurling in the mustard dusk of sunlit pollen.
No one’s daughter and I watch the creatures of the windows awaken. Lizards devour jeweled beetles gnawing hand-like flowers. My fingers move through vines carefully. See what happens to my hands picking the flowers, revealing creatures’ faces hidden in shadow?
Not just anyone is allowed to hold us—only those who follow the patron’s rules and pay the money.
Pay enough money to the right person and travel for hours across several borders, and you’ll find me and my sister with no one’s daughter in this secret theater where white flowers sway. Restless rivers nestle deep valleys. Miles away from desert caves and cities of the sea, misty mountains rise. Mountain vines hide the theater’s gates, the bars over the windows glimpsed through cracks in the cabinet doors.
Vines tangle like the hair of giants. Despite the large insects that glitter like black jewels in the vines, little hands move through window bars. Even now, my fingers are attempting to untangle pointy emerald leaves sweating milk in the night.
I touch no one’s daughter—her bony shoulders, her pointy elbows, her dancer’s legs—and the milk sticks to her silky thighs. We rub the milk in between our legs, and it tingles there. No one else here knows what we do with the milk from the vines, rubbing it all over our skin like lotion. She laughs as I lick the milk from her lips. I rest my head on her belly, fingers sticky. I cradle her large breasts in my hands, comparing her breasts to mine and wondering when mine will grow. She kisses me hard and allows me to suckle her. The milk from the vines tastes of mint and lavender and lemon and mimosa blossoms and pine mixed with soap. But the milk from her breasts is rich, salty, and a little sour like homemade cheese. Her milk is the reason I’m getting fatter while all the other actors are getting thinner. The night isn’t as long as it seems. By dawn, we are shivering in each other’s arms, legs entangled as she whispers about the leaves. I try to move against her, wrestling with her, but she stops me because of the voices in the hall. Sister is still sleeping, and the red sun is rising.
Milk leaves sway in vine-netted trees. Snakes slither in swarms rolled into balls, tangling in sun like twine in the mating season. Vines hide nests. Birds also meet in the vines, and sometimes the snakes swallow birds along with their eggs. If you capture a big snake and cut it open, you might find little snakes living inside. You might release frogs and birds still breathing inside the snake, stunned creatures curled in final heartbeats, devoured lizards awakening outside the belly.
Birds eat lizards leaping along leaves. Petals sway. Shivering, white flowers open like the hands of children. Bees and black butterflies hover over ivory petals uncurling in the mustard dusk of sunlit pollen.
No one’s daughter and I watch the creatures of the windows awaken. Lizards devour jeweled beetles gnawing hand-like flowers. My fingers move through vines carefully. See what happens to my hands picking the flowers, revealing creatures’ faces hidden in shadow?

Don’t be afraid, she whispers to me, as I whisper to you.
Illegal performances unfold in doorways. Inside hidden rooms, there is beauty. Sunset falls, roses of light. I feed my pet owls, as captured women wait like panicked birds. Stolen daughters cradle runaway sons, caressing boys on balconies. Overlooking statues of our patron, the stage is a garden of little girls waking in the rain. My sleepy sister walks there as the stage manager adjusts the girls’ flower masks with his large gentle fingers. Through leaky roofs, crystal tears fall. Our little bone puppets! Our boxed tears smelling of the shore. The crystal rain creates prisms for girls inside elegant cabinets, where the stage manager stores me beside no one’s daughter between acts.
Inside the theater, if you buy enough flowers, the ushers will allow you to glimpse handsome remains hidden inside of a large jar containing a blue satchel filled with white flowers. The corpse makes sounds like the whisper over water lilies, the fresh water. I want to go where the water-lily soul has traveled.
But how could you ever understand until you’ve caressed no one’s daughter? She lingers near the white flowers falling. I love her more than I love the trainer I’ve lost, the one who first placed me inside a cabinet to train me in the darkness.
No one’s daughter whispers to me at night as I hold her. She tries to stay away from the shadow cabinets and the trainers. But if I’m locked inside, she goes to me, opening the cabinet door to loosen my straps, so that I can escape to loosen the straps of my sister.
Frightened women become desert roses near the white flowers. Please say, red flowers, white flower, blue flowers, violet flowers, yellow flowers, pink flowers, crimson flowers. Don’t ask, what do you think of the way a little actor protects itself by making up such an oddly pretty name for something so horrible? Shadow cabinets house us and we learn the comfort of hiding. We live and die by the stage manager’s secret. Perversity is passion in the theater. Our pride is our shame. The future has been stolen by the past, in order to keep the director alive.
People say it’s the actors’ fault. They keep looking in and out of the windows.
Please don’t blame the children. Don’t say we are bad actors.
What do our trainers call the disappearing and reappearing faces? “Have you seen the white flowers?” They whisper. “What did you think of the white flowers this morning?” They tell us, “Every town has a secret theater disguised as a house among houses,” but they refuse to say what happens to the flowers.
All good ushers refuse to say the flowers’ secret inside the theater.
No one is supposed to live inside, but there are people walking. No one is supposed to be looking out the windows, but anyone who stares at the windows long enough will glimpse faces gazing back—perhaps beautiful faces with long dark hair tangled in the vines, perhaps old men’s faces with gray beards, or perhaps children’s faces beneath white flowers pressed against dusty iron bars where lizards circle.
Despite the fear it inspires, the secret theater in the town is pleasing, lovely because of the color of the stone. The theater shimmers like pale sand in sunlight and glitters like rain in moonlight. Inside the gates, the statues’ stone is pink, almost like women’s flesh in the evening. When the sun goes down, reddish rays peak over the hills and color the stone and its people like the light fading behind the mountains.
Among the roses, no one’s daughter starves in fragile light, terrified of anyone who comes near. Sometimes she refuses to eat her meals of rice and bread, but at night, she waits for me and licks the milk from the vines from my fingers. She feeds me milk from her swollen breasts, and I wonder if she has a real child, where the child has gone. Has she been pregnant before, how many times? What has happened to her while I am alone in the cabinets and cannot see? What is it like? Where do the babies go? She needs me to suckle or she will hurt. When she sees me at night, her breasts leak milk.
In the mornings, no one’s daughter hides the way children sometimes do. When she thinks no one is near, her clear voice, flowing like the narrow stream, winds through the jungle. Our patron calls the jungle “the woods.”
Flowers surround us near the windows and cover her nakedness.
“Steal her petals,” the new actor whispers. No one’s daughter waits in the heaviness of our patron’s violet perfume—a flower that can be stolen, something men might possess. She cries in silence as theatergoers attempt to cup the roses over her breasts. Laughing, they chase her. Mean, we think, sounds like men, so theatergoers will do anything to prove their meanness, their man-ness, especially to her, as she and the patron walk naked in the night.
I wait for no one’s daughter backstage in the dark. I wrap my body in curtain folds until she has heard the last theatergoer calling while covering her nakedness with trembling hands. Her hands are bright pale doves darting over skin. Doves light on thin arms, the branches.
Illegal performances unfold in doorways. Inside hidden rooms, there is beauty. Sunset falls, roses of light. I feed my pet owls, as captured women wait like panicked birds. Stolen daughters cradle runaway sons, caressing boys on balconies. Overlooking statues of our patron, the stage is a garden of little girls waking in the rain. My sleepy sister walks there as the stage manager adjusts the girls’ flower masks with his large gentle fingers. Through leaky roofs, crystal tears fall. Our little bone puppets! Our boxed tears smelling of the shore. The crystal rain creates prisms for girls inside elegant cabinets, where the stage manager stores me beside no one’s daughter between acts.
Inside the theater, if you buy enough flowers, the ushers will allow you to glimpse handsome remains hidden inside of a large jar containing a blue satchel filled with white flowers. The corpse makes sounds like the whisper over water lilies, the fresh water. I want to go where the water-lily soul has traveled.
But how could you ever understand until you’ve caressed no one’s daughter? She lingers near the white flowers falling. I love her more than I love the trainer I’ve lost, the one who first placed me inside a cabinet to train me in the darkness.
No one’s daughter whispers to me at night as I hold her. She tries to stay away from the shadow cabinets and the trainers. But if I’m locked inside, she goes to me, opening the cabinet door to loosen my straps, so that I can escape to loosen the straps of my sister.
Frightened women become desert roses near the white flowers. Please say, red flowers, white flower, blue flowers, violet flowers, yellow flowers, pink flowers, crimson flowers. Don’t ask, what do you think of the way a little actor protects itself by making up such an oddly pretty name for something so horrible? Shadow cabinets house us and we learn the comfort of hiding. We live and die by the stage manager’s secret. Perversity is passion in the theater. Our pride is our shame. The future has been stolen by the past, in order to keep the director alive.
People say it’s the actors’ fault. They keep looking in and out of the windows.
Please don’t blame the children. Don’t say we are bad actors.
What do our trainers call the disappearing and reappearing faces? “Have you seen the white flowers?” They whisper. “What did you think of the white flowers this morning?” They tell us, “Every town has a secret theater disguised as a house among houses,” but they refuse to say what happens to the flowers.
All good ushers refuse to say the flowers’ secret inside the theater.
No one is supposed to live inside, but there are people walking. No one is supposed to be looking out the windows, but anyone who stares at the windows long enough will glimpse faces gazing back—perhaps beautiful faces with long dark hair tangled in the vines, perhaps old men’s faces with gray beards, or perhaps children’s faces beneath white flowers pressed against dusty iron bars where lizards circle.
Despite the fear it inspires, the secret theater in the town is pleasing, lovely because of the color of the stone. The theater shimmers like pale sand in sunlight and glitters like rain in moonlight. Inside the gates, the statues’ stone is pink, almost like women’s flesh in the evening. When the sun goes down, reddish rays peak over the hills and color the stone and its people like the light fading behind the mountains.
Among the roses, no one’s daughter starves in fragile light, terrified of anyone who comes near. Sometimes she refuses to eat her meals of rice and bread, but at night, she waits for me and licks the milk from the vines from my fingers. She feeds me milk from her swollen breasts, and I wonder if she has a real child, where the child has gone. Has she been pregnant before, how many times? What has happened to her while I am alone in the cabinets and cannot see? What is it like? Where do the babies go? She needs me to suckle or she will hurt. When she sees me at night, her breasts leak milk.
In the mornings, no one’s daughter hides the way children sometimes do. When she thinks no one is near, her clear voice, flowing like the narrow stream, winds through the jungle. Our patron calls the jungle “the woods.”
Flowers surround us near the windows and cover her nakedness.
“Steal her petals,” the new actor whispers. No one’s daughter waits in the heaviness of our patron’s violet perfume—a flower that can be stolen, something men might possess. She cries in silence as theatergoers attempt to cup the roses over her breasts. Laughing, they chase her. Mean, we think, sounds like men, so theatergoers will do anything to prove their meanness, their man-ness, especially to her, as she and the patron walk naked in the night.
I wait for no one’s daughter backstage in the dark. I wrap my body in curtain folds until she has heard the last theatergoer calling while covering her nakedness with trembling hands. Her hands are bright pale doves darting over skin. Doves light on thin arms, the branches.
~

She tells me to pretend to become the child of a stolen actress, a singer with no name. She shows me how to speak to birds through song before the head ticket taker delivers me into the hands of a theatergoer.
In the evening, hers are the voices that all hear and are afraid to answer. She belongs to everyone but herself, living in the aviary among captured birds. My pet owls call to her, amber eyes staring through broken petals.
Birds of night haunt the director, who plucks the petals of my sisters’ eyes.
Even if she flees into night, tigers will eat her. We wait until she reaches her arms past the white flowers. Her arms graze pollen-dusted masks, long hair falling. In the holes of the masks, false lashes twitch like black feathers. Because of what the makeup artist has done, my little sister has hummingbird eyes.
“Sweet,” the new actor says, slowly chewing a ripe plum. “She’ll be leaving us soon.”
“Liar,” we whisper.
“What?” he asks, wiping juice off his chin.
The new actor is the worst type of liar because he doesn’t even know when he’s telling the truth. Everyone knows he’s a liar, but he inspires people, just the same. Often, he knows what he shouldn’t—the way certain flowers will die, leaves and portraits clutched in wilting hands.
“Get out of the aviary,” he calls. “Show your face.”
Behind the walls, somewhere echoing, the sound of an infant crying, and then a child’s voice whispers on the other side of the broken window.
“Hush,” it says.
In the evening, hers are the voices that all hear and are afraid to answer. She belongs to everyone but herself, living in the aviary among captured birds. My pet owls call to her, amber eyes staring through broken petals.
Birds of night haunt the director, who plucks the petals of my sisters’ eyes.
Even if she flees into night, tigers will eat her. We wait until she reaches her arms past the white flowers. Her arms graze pollen-dusted masks, long hair falling. In the holes of the masks, false lashes twitch like black feathers. Because of what the makeup artist has done, my little sister has hummingbird eyes.
“Sweet,” the new actor says, slowly chewing a ripe plum. “She’ll be leaving us soon.”
“Liar,” we whisper.
“What?” he asks, wiping juice off his chin.
The new actor is the worst type of liar because he doesn’t even know when he’s telling the truth. Everyone knows he’s a liar, but he inspires people, just the same. Often, he knows what he shouldn’t—the way certain flowers will die, leaves and portraits clutched in wilting hands.
“Get out of the aviary,” he calls. “Show your face.”
Behind the walls, somewhere echoing, the sound of an infant crying, and then a child’s voice whispers on the other side of the broken window.
“Hush,” it says.
~
Horses run in circles around the yard, tracing a trail around the house. On the ground, the shadows of the horses’ legs tangle with shadows of high branches. Like the young trees, we can only take so much. When the wind blows, we lean into each other. The oldest trees live so much longer than the oldest actors, and if only we could remember what the trees must know, we might not be as concerned with the horses’ shadows as they prance around overgrown gardens. Like the horses, we disappear in the night.