Two drifting particles in the world without destination, clinging onto whatever they happened to bump into. Dandelion fluff. The crestfallen bunked down, burrowing into the soft blankets, searching out a kinder reality. The valley of darkness between where dry palms caressed, and fingers were laced in unspoken agreement. Closing eyes, dreaming minds.
Almond eyes; the bow of the lips bruised and bitten red; the crescent curve of the cheek; the twilight glow of pale skin, neon lights and the creamy moon; quartz glazed face, little glistening teardrops on the colourless skin; the curve of the neck, and the dip where the collar bones converged delicately. A blue tinted face, and when he danced away, so pliant and shockingly seductive.
He was upset; he begged me to cure him. I sat and fed him scarlet persimmons till he was ready to throw up. Persimmons are an Asiatic fruit; he felt lost and without roots in this modern discord; fruit consoled him of his beginnings, and every beginning. He slept, the half moons of his closed eyelids; palms kissed, the most sensitive part of bodies. Unforbidden fruits in Garden of Eden.
All was still, then he woke; the soft padding of his slippered feet on the floor was careful. He filled a silver pail with running cold water. The water shimmered from the light outside and settled, little ripples working their magic and dying. 4:30 a.m. in the morning, and he had a cheap friendship ring in his palm.
He hoisted the silver bowl of water and approached the bedside window, the loose blue robes he wore shifting and flying as he opened it. He brushed the curtains away and placed the bowl down on the floor carefully and silently. He sat there and stared into its depths, catching the gleam of the moon on the mirroring surface of the dark water.
Under the milky umbrella of the moon’s round face, he created the greatest illusion, twisting and taming the tangled webs in his mind with the thickening and thinning lines and strokes. He came back to bed, and embraced his cold body to mine; his element is fiery, and the cold was strange. The cheap friendship ring lied at the bottom of the bowl.
Next morning, he washed his face with the water in the silver bowl.
“It’s to be beautiful. My mother did this whenever I felt bad about something, and I guess I’m just use to it, like a quirk. It’s an old superstition, I think.” He smiled, tired.
The first day.
I looked at the tattered sketch book on his table. Little chibi imitations; little Kaoru, little Die, little Kyo, little Shinya, little Toshiya. Death, the God of Death; am I the end? But it’s light and humorous, and I laughed instead of pondering his little hint. Does he really believe me to be the end of time? I said it to my face in the mirror: I am his time’s end? It didn’t sound right.
“I wish I was a child again.” He said. “You don’t have to worry about anything except what you’re going to eat and how you’re gonna play, but then I don’t want to be, because I will have to do everything again. Being a chibi is much better.”
I flipped a page. Myself smoking, leaning on a stone railing surrounded by red ivy.
“And that’s you, touched by poison ivy. As for the cigarette . . . ah, so typically you.”
I flipped a page. Him and I. He was fast asleep, the expression on his face gentle, using my legs as a pillow. I was asleep too, leaning against the seat back, my hands resting on his head, brushing away the hair on his face. We were on a train. So he went for realism this time. He was always doing sometime unexpected.
“I read a poem once, about life being like a train trip. In a train, you always pass the same stops. Like everyone in life. We all decide if we want to do this or that, do we eat that or this; just stops we can choose to get off at. Except we don’t have to get off at all. Most people don’t even know it.”
“Can I stay here? There? Where you are?”
“Yes.”
He looped his arm around my neck and leaned on me. I don’t understand him at all, yet I like him; his instant happiness, his childish happiness, his pessimism, unusual introspection, seeming shallowness, his cruelty and his kindness. I like people who do nothing and gaze into space; I looked at him through the thin reflection of the glass. He looked different with his glasses.
“What do you want for breakfast?”
He bounced on the balls of his feet, jumping around the red room cleaning up. Instant happiness. Breakfast passed quickly. We rolled around on his bed wrestling over who got to cook lunch, messing up his sheets. He had white sheets for once. He gave me a pot of dying black flowers with the black and red lacquered tray holding my lunch.
He was so polite, “It’s deadly nightshade. It’s poisonous, but it’s aesthetically pleasing, don’t you think Kaoru-kun?”
I touched his lips to pause him in his speech. Is he real? Is this a fantasy or dream of sorts? His lips were soft and uncommonly hot under my fingers; the little puffs of his breath through my fingers. He’s warm. Burning me through and through. I kissed his lips, the reality of them scaring me and squeezing my stomach with the sting of vinegar.
The first sting.
We went shopping because that’s what I did; the world was drenched in colour and commercialisation. We bought him bells, many tiny little bells to take away the silence and bring him luck. We bought him bedclothes; I don’t even know why I did it, but I think it has to do with the loneliness he must feel to sleep alone in that huge bed. I bought a robe of deep blue silk scattered with plum blossoms.
“It’s a woman’s robe.” He said.
“Do you mind? It suits you, I think. It’s not offending, is it?”
He shrugged, “No, why the hell should I be offended? All the world is a stage. I warn you though, if I want to do something spontaneous – and I know I will – like climb up walls, that is going to be totally trashed. Just don’t get disappointed if that happens, okay? Just a forewarning.”
So simplistic, his little truth of the world being a stage, or is it his irony?
“You won’t really . . . will you?”
He took it from me and smiled sweetly, “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll make sure I’m wearing it and nothing else at one of our concerts. Then we’ll see how long it lasts when I try a bit of stage jumping.”
He refused to eat anymore persimmons that afternoon, so sickened by the previous night, but he picked daintily at the hard prickly shell of chestnuts and ate them with a certain relish. I did too, for autumn was my favourite season and chestnuts are of the autumn. We talked, and talked and talked and maybe laughed.
“Will you just stay put for one second?!”
“No.” His cheeky grin.
“Please??!”
“Oh, okay, okay! What do I get?”
“You want to get something for not annoying me?”
“Yeah, why not? Come on, do me a deal.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’ll promise to fuck me in that robe?”
I choked on my coffee and he laughed. He fell out of the chair and laughed sitting on the floor, breathless as he told me his butt was sore from falling. I un-choked myself and dragged him up. He stood and broke down again. I hit him with my spoon. He wrapped his arm around my leg and smiled up at me.
“Forgiven?”
I grinned, “What do I get?”
When we were going home, he saw a little piece of black stone on the floor and snatched it up. He thought it was beautiful in it’s dark simplicity. I smiled, because this is what I liked about him; only a child may regard a sequin as being more beautiful than a diamond. But then, he already had diamonds; it was the salt spilling from his eyes. Bleeding eyes of him.
“I feel so energetic.” He said, “Jump on the bed with me.”
We jumped on the bed and he did back flips. We revelled in childish whims and laughed at the strangest things. We hit each other with pillows till the room was covered in chicken feathers. He collapsed back onto his bed of feathers. He sneezed and kicked me in the shins when I snickered.
What did we do that afternoon? Fall into lust? It must be; learning the curves and lines of a body that was not mine, an alien landscape of hidden shadowy places. The bleached white sunlight of autumn shimmering through the pillowing curtains stung my bleeding eyes. The sheets were once white, but by late afternoon, they had a large rusty black spot in the middle. He bundled it up and threw it out; I smelt his blood.
Under my lips, the skin of bleeding grapes, called for lips, tongue and fingers; to learn of the texture of the peel. I wounded him, my teeth piercing the thin skin of his lips. I noticed things I’ve never noticed before; gently arched nose; sweetly rounded cheeks flowing down to bloodied lips; a firm chin; tender neck, the hollow. The black stone squeezed and then forgotten on the bedside floor as he screamed.
The slick and moist touch of skin rubbing together, tainted with bodily fluids; saturated. Vein’s fluid rivets. The valley between the legs shrouded is no longer a mystery. The elegant and spare lines of the shoulders; muscle and dry skin wrapped bone. They bore my finger prints, the colour of plums and my bites, filled with the fruity kiss of claret.
The colour of plums.
“Ume (no) hana.” The plum flower. “May I call you that?”
Such a breathy whisper, “If so . . . you may call me whatever you wish . . . it doesn’t matter . . . I can’t think . . . I should say no shouldn’t I? What an awful . . . thing to . . . call me . . . I’m not a girl . . . no matter . . . go ahead . . .”
And so it is; a plum blossom foot sliding down my leg, a flower of spring around my neck, a round fruit of the summertime pleasuring me, tinged blue by winter and bruised maroon by autumn; the sweet nectar even more divine coupled with the sting of sourness rolling on my tongue. Isn’t it Kyo’s favourite fruit? I could see why he likes it. But he was sour, and this sting warned me of him. He could only see the end of everything, a rotten sickly sugar plum.
He left me alone and tangled in red sheets to hang up bells in the room. I watched the shadow of the red latticed window on his skin. The wooden floorboards, something I remember him putting into this apartment when he moved in, were shiny. I could see his reflection, his silhouette against patch of the blue and orange light of evening.
“Are you coated in ivory?”
He turned and looked at me strangely, “No.”
“You’re cold, but strangely . . . nice. You remind me of ivory. I’ve always thought that about you. From the very beginning . . . when we first met . . . I could see your eyes and your hands and your cheekbones . . . it’s nice.”
“You make me sound like food.”
“No, I don’t mean it like that. It’s something else.”
“As dew dries in the morning sun, so dries beauty. Too late is it understood what an illusion a pretty face is.” I could see he was faraway, and then the sudden shift, “I forget who says that but I like it.” He shrugged; so casual. “Kind of like glassware.”
“It doesn’t matter. I think you’re . . .” Dared I breath the word, “. . . beautiful.”
He paused, his hand up with finger out, dangling from it a silver bell. “Kaoru, remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless, like lilies or roses or whatever. I could say you are too, but I won’t. You’re easily . . . adored, yes, that’s a good word to use. Endearing.”
Hanging bells in his room, to ward away the silence; and charming they are, ringing delicately as he moved through the darkness of his room. Jangled clinks of glass-chiming sweetness; a different sort of music. He wrapped himself in the plum-patterned robe; so dignified; the blue on red. He crossed his leg for a second and tapped his chin, elbows on his kneecap.
“Tomorrow is Wednesday. We’ve already missed practice today. We have to go to practice tomorrow, you know, we can’t stay locked up forever. Die rang twice and Kyo left a message, well, okay, a hex for us on the answering machine.”
He opened the window to let the evening breeze in. We were Adam and Eve for a day, the only two people in the world, without the snake and the fruit. Time, not sin and the wrath of God, chased us. Lost and found; we recognised each other and yet knew not, unknowing as we danced, knowing when we crashed. The first and the last.
“But don’t you think this is pleasant?”
“It was wonderfully pleasant.” He perched himself on his window sill, the small of his back a source of bemusement. “But like all good things, it must sadly end.”
His cynical dramatics aren’t lost on me. He stretched languidly and sat down, deftly plucking an odd melody on his bass. Fast and perky, conflicting with his distant expression. Fast and full of violent rhythm. He was this walking contradiction, unsmiling but laughing, cold but talkative.
“Thank you.” I whispered.
“For what? For the tumble? Oh, you’re perfectly welcome.” His voice was light and melodious, seemingly naïve but the lilt on the words are filled with acidic sarcasm; an incision of light reproach against himself.
“No, for taking away the monotony.” And for taking away the bitter aftertaste in my mouth – I wanted to say – the sign of my sickness, of my flesh weakened by the lingering poison; I have been bled and all poisons are gone; but I didn’t, lest he still be infected. He was never really poisoned, just guilty.
He smiled dryly, “The monotony? Is this idleness not monotony enough?”
“It’s different, the stillness you instil. I feel like time has stopped.” My voice was brittle.
Japan moves so swiftly that everything is played out to the quick beat of a drum; maybe even faster than our songs. The overload is confusing; the stillness is a welcomed change. The stresses of everyday life, even if one were self-employed; the mood of the city was sharp clacks of stick. Toshiya walking in the park, outside of time and space and in between.
He laid down on the floor under the window and stared up at me, “To capture a moment with the stroke of my pen, one must stop to feel the moment, right? I like stillness sometimes, I exited the world and become an observer. Sounds poetic, doesn’t it? I always thought I could do something artistic, get an arts degree that’s easy to get into, just didn’t know what kind. Um, and so I worked in a sushi bar . . . funny that . . .”
I stared at him; the robe enmeshed his body in deep oceanic colours; the plum flower.
He crawled up to me and grinned, so blinding. “And why are you staring at me?”
“What did Kyo say exactly?”
“Um . . . it’s kind of rude . . .” He leaned closer and breathed on my lips.
“Yes . . . tell me . . .”
He gave me an oral caress of his own violation; it’s glazed with the honey of strawberry clover and not at all aggressive. His knees are not frigid to my touch. There is no tongue, no saliva, just skin. He pulled back.
“He said something along the lines of us being little fuckers and how we could be damned for all he cares.”
“Anything else . . .?” I pressed our lips together.
“We shouldn’t have wasted his time . . . he could’ve stayed in bed all day but . . . he got up and dragged himself to practice . . . if we knew practice was off . . . we should have fucking told . . . uh . . . stop now . . . no . . . can’t do that again . . . don’t touch me there!”
He hit me vaguely and tumbled away along the floor. His mouth was open and I could see a pink tongue, a snake’s tongue that flicked up at the little tear in his lip. I tasted blood in my mouth. Bruised him with my blood collecting. He collected blood from me and I tried to suck it back.
He stood, “Do the dishes with me. You wash and I’ll rinse, okay?”
The beauty of him under electric lights . . .
+
Toshiya picked up the little leaflet and frowned, “What’s this?”
To: Toshiya Hara
Reason: demerit detention.
Time: after practice for 2
hours.
Signed: Kaoru Niikura.
“You’re under detention?” Shinya peeked over his shoulder. “Weird . . .”
Die rubbed his chin, “Funny that, it’s in green. Green pen for writing . . . not your usual thing but this is Kaoru. You know, back in high school, I remember that green was only used to write love letters. Ha, I guess that’s changed.”
A look pasted between Shinya and Kyo and they nodded. Kyo frowned. Shinya frowned. Die turned around and started to turn his guitar again. He didn’t know and he really couldn’t care less. Shinya tapped Die on the shoulder and dragged him out of the room by the ear. Kyo lit a cigarette and got closer to Toshiya’s still figure.
“So, what are you in trouble for?”
Toshiya turned the leaflet over and stared at the word scribbled in the corner.
+
“You like curry, don’t you?” He gave me a bowl of curried chicken and rice.
“Yes. Just where did you have this hidden?”
He smiled proudly and held up frost-red hands. “Frozen like hell in the back of the freezer.”
We sat down and ate at the table for the first time; alone with each other; normal. He would probably tell me that ‘normal’ didn’t exist. I thought I saw people standing there at the doorways watching us, but when I turned to look, there wasn’t anybody. I was scared, strange eh?
“Curry makes it feel like Saturday.” He played with his food, “My family almost always had curry on Saturday. I hate Sunday though. Loved Friday and Saturday. You could sleep and not give a toss about waking up on time. Wonderful.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“I know that, except time feels like it doesn’t exist anymore.”
I grinned, “A side effect of your anarchistic spirit?”
“No . . . I . . . it’s not so alone with you here, you know, it’s interesting now.”
We looked at each other from across the table. I tried to decide if it was worth it; not being alone; liveliness instead of monotony; air instead of ice. He started eating, silently and thinking to himself whilst humming. He wasn’t afraid of me; he didn’t belittle me. He was afraid of this thing but that could be fixed . . . connecting.
“Do you believe in obsession?” He asked.
“I believe in androgynous infatuation.”
A distance more vast than the interstellar dimensions of space.
+
The days falling to the dimness of the practice room as we sat on the couch and spoke. Our language of uncommonness, of the way we saw wonders in the daily motions of the world on its axis. The timbre of the voice is uncommonly brittle, and uncommonly sweet to the curved shell of my ears.
“Tell me you are not . . .”
“I don’t know . . . I recognise you . . .”
“Don’t waste your time, Kaoru. Compose a song instead, okay?”
“I . . . I disagree . . . you recognise me as well . . .”
“Even now, you’re so calm and analytical. Everything you say is so emotive, but your face is a complete blank.”
“Even now, you are so cynical and sarcastic. You are so utterly emotional, but so completely unsentimental.”
“Suits me, don’t you think?”
“Beautifully.”
“ . . . . . . . . . . . . . .”
“. . . why did you put your tongue in?”
“Because I wanted to.”
“Is everything as you want it?”
“Yes, if anything is not correct, I either fix it or I run.”
“Run?”
“Yeah, as fast as my two feet can take me. What’s wrong, Kaoru?”
“Isn’t that denial?”
“Call it what you want, I call it the initiative to dump the dead and get on with life.”
+
He couldn’t hear me. I expected nothing less. His head was wired up. He heard only the music blazoning out from the little pieces of metal and plastic inserted in his ear, and the steady beats of his blood’s red rose. That’s alright with me, because sometimes I didn’t want to talk to him. His smooth lips closed were just as appealing as the contents that flowed from his mind and into the mine through his mouth. Sometimes, I just wanted to look.
“No matter what my face is like, or how straight my teeth is, my body is just as it is.” He held up his arms and looked at them, “Aren’t they ugly? The veins that is. When I’m cold, the veins show a bit. I hate that. Girls never have that problem. Maybe I shouldn’t have played sport, eh? Only people who seemed to be active have veins like that.”
I rubbed the curves and ruptures in his skin for him. “Some girls have that problem too.”
“Rarely.” He paused, “Which is why when I’m reincarnated as a girl, I’m going to be obsessed with my body.”
“You sound so sure.”
“Like I said, I want to be reincarnated as a girl. My face does not suit me. Makes me confused as hell. If I had my face and I was a girl, everything would be clear.”
“What? Don’t you mean it makes ‘others’ confused?”
He smiled, “I don’t know whether to sit nicely and cross my legs to suit how I look or wrestle and laugh to be how I am. If I’m a girl, I can do both, not have those horrible veins, keep my face and still play bass anyway.”
“Everything seems planned.”
“Yeah, now all I have to do is pray.”
“Don’t pray too hard.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“You need to play bass for a couple of years more so don’t have pray too hard for your wish. After all, a dead bass player just doesn’t work and a baby girl is still a baby, not that you’re not a baby yourself.”
He arched an eyebrow and smiled, fishing out a lollipop from his pocket. “Need a dummy, Kaoru-ko?”
+
Dawn was waiting right outside. Morning came. The sun sifted through the blinds. A working day today; no chestnuts, sleeping in or sensory explorations. Perhaps I am sad to be shaken from the fantasy of the idle, but that doesn’t matter as I dressed and stepped outside the doorsteps. Vertical strips of sunlight on my skin and his.
+
Let’s start again; was I just a child? I don’t mind if you take me down, I don’t mind if you break it all, how much more can you take from me? How much more can you take? I’d like to take you inside my head. I’d like to take you inside of me . . .
+
“Dance!” He grabbed my hand and jumped up and down on the bed, “Come on!”
He was rising higher and higher, flying. He’s face was flushed and exhilarated. He looked like how he would be in the middle of a live. When he’s trying not to smile and yet laughing hysterically at some strange fan service someone has just performed. He doesn’t object at all, in fact, he wants to set the imagination afire.
And he doesn’t slow down. He goes faster because he can’t stop, the waves of rhythm just makes it addictive and he can’t stop. He doesn’t want to. His body is flailing and he’s happy that way. The mindless feeling of his body moving in careless and crude movements up and down and everywhere in the air, flying.
I collapsed on the bed tripping on my slipping socks and he tripped on me. He kissed me with sloppiness and fumbling movements but his lack of inhibitions made my mind crackle with the spite and malice of thunder in the clouds. We rolled off the bed and hit the floor.
He rubbed his head, “Ouch, well that certainly hurt.”
+
Following him back the apartment, taking the train but watching him from the next carriage. Stepping behind him, ever a few metres behind. He followed. Sometimes, his pursued turned and looked at him. He didn’t say anything to him about his strange habit of just following him. He followed him up the lift and finally, through the door of his apartment.
“Are we going to have an affair of sorts?”
“I don’t know. We’re going to be friends.”
“We’re already friends.”
Toshiya’s back to the door and kissing with his tongue. His lips stuck to Kaoru’s in the familiar and steady sucking motions of what a kiss should be. He stopped and opened his mouth, pressing and allowing his saliva to flow. Saliva flowing between their mouths. He wanted to call it spit swapping but it felt so strange that the crude term just didn’t fit.
They pulled apart and a single crystalline strand of saliva between their lips. Kaoru smiled and stuck his tongue out to catch it. Toshiya started at the pinkness of that tongue. Flesh the colour of flesh, flesh and blood, blood and bone, bone and flesh. Toshiya braced his palm, barrier to Kaoru’s lips. He placed both hands on Kaoru’s shoulders and smiled dryly.
“Sorry to mention it, but I think your definition of friendship is a little screwed.”
“I don’t care.”
+
The garage people asked him to remove all personal items. Die sighed and decided that while he didn’t want to go through Toshiya’s stuff, he had to. Die picked up the book he found in Toshiya’s car: Under a Glass Bell by Anais Nin. His fingers flicked through pages before he reached a bookmark. A Polaroid: four of them smiling at Toshiya’s kitchen table that morning after their hangover.
He laughed a bit seeing the rabbit ears he’d given Shinya and Kaoru; but then, revenge was had by Kyo who gave him rabbit ears in turn. He scanned the page marked. Part of it was highlighted pink, some bits underlined even.
. . . and said: ‘Do you think we will ever find our twin
in love?’
‘People who are twins,’ I said, ‘there is a curse
upon their love. Love is made of differences and suffering and apartness,
and of the struggle to overcome this apartness. Two people who love the
dream above all else would soon both vanish altogether. One of them must be on
the earth to hold the other down. And the pain of being held down by the
earth, reality, that is what our love for others will be.’
‘You know how I live, by what I call the alternating
currents. Sometimes, I am afraid to get cut off altogether. But when
I do love, what anxiety I feel, what doubts.’
‘Doubts not of love, but of reality. You live in a mirage and you seek to be incarnated through the body of your love. With your gift for metamorphosis you can remove yourself so far that in love you seek the warmth and the reassurance of your very existence. You float too easily, you are too easily cut off. Then when love holds you in bondage for a moment you feel anguish. But at some time or other you will have to accept having a body, a reality, being in bondage. You will have to enter the prison of human life and accept the suffering.’
Die closed the book and stared at the purple sky outside. Toshiya probably wanted this back. He slipped it into his pocket and drove home. He wondered about normal things, like what was on TV tonight, what was for dinner, and what time could he go and visit the fort again. He loved forts, the grandiose history in every speckle of dirt and sand. Before he slept that night, he thought about the book.
He picked it up and starred at it. He opened the first page. It said: Property of Toshiya Hara. He went to the last page and starred at the single word written: Kaoru.
+
And so he
fucked me on my stomach . . .
Is this
desire enough? Infatuation written on my body and his. Enough to lift us
higher? Said not scared turned and smiled.
Secrets in his eyes, the sweetness of desire. Hour-long, by hour may we
stand between these concrete walls. The sunset behind his eyes and he said, is
this desire . . . ? I stood there on the sandy shore and watched his dazed eyes
staring at the sky, his skin soaked.
I stuck the
grassy cigarette in my mouth and rubbed my dry fingers together. The sun was
coming up from the east, across the sea and then finally, touching the city of
Tokyo where I was. I had probably just experienced the most intensive
sensations of my life, and here I was smoking and lost. I threw out another set
of sheets. I needed to go shopping.
“I’m not
sure what I’m doing here.” I said. “I promised that if it’s going to end, the
answer is no.”
I was silent; I closed my eyes, my mouth and saved my breath for the important stuff. Open your legs and get down to business so to speak. I came over my sheets. That was the first time. There were others. A week has gone past already . . . he followed me home after the first time and I opened my door. But I kept the window open, the escape route. Too bad I was busy kissing, jerking, sucking or fucking to use it.
“I’m not use to this . . . need to move now . . . shit, muscles pain. Move! Move!”
He was so quiet. “You’ve never done it quite like this . . . have you? This much?”
“Don’t feel bad, if that’s what’s got you twirling.” My smile was dry, my mouth was dry; I was dry. “I’m the one who threatened you that I’d finish myself off you didn’t hurry up.”
He kissed my ears; I liked it there. He touched them and patted my hair. Everything would be okay after that because I would just sit on his lap and fall asleep listening to noises outside. Our conversations that mean nothing and everything. The orange glow of the rising sun. I saw the sunrises, but never the sunsets. I saw the beginning before me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the end.
“Things aren’t like they use to be . . .”
“Like anything ever was . . .”
“Different incarnations . . . it’s still the same isn’t it?”
“Of course . . . of course . . . that is . . .” I grinned, “You’re not into under-aged sex, are you?”
He tapped me on the head, “Dirty the memories, why don’t you?”
“Hey! I said it was still the same, so be nice, eh?”
Except the place where you wait for me is empty, I said silently, because I can’t feel like that. I refuse to feel like that. I refuse. I will not stand in the frozen winter, mid-season, holding onto melting ice, dissolving colours . . . there’s no difference between it and obsession or infatuation . . . and as we know, those wear off soon enough . . .
My first name Toshiya . . . prettiest mess I’m in . . . black is my colour and so is blue . . . pretty mouth and dark my eyes . . . I see them come and go . . . there will be one to collect my soul . . . and come to me . . . thousands of miles away . . . he walks on the coast . . . thousands of miles . . . it lays open, the road . . . I hear there’s a tale untold . . . the tale lays open like a road in front of me . . .
The sun touched the tip of my feet.
The beginning, like the way that Egyptian statues are everyday at dawn, waiting for the sun to strike them. Except this was the end; autumn alludes to winter. My blue toenails gleamed aqua in the light. I wriggled them and he wriggled his black-manicured toes with mine. The beginning and the end. The end, as vampires turned out their beds for sleep.
Black and blue, old shoe.
Arna.