I wouldn’t do him the discredit of saying he’s trembling, if nothing else because I know how much that would aggravate him - but there’s no subtlety to the motion either. 

He’s quaking - rocking forwards and back in agitated, abbreviated half centimeters - completely insensible to my approach until I squat down in front of him and his eyes meet mine.

And they’re wet.

He’s not trying to hide them, but I can tell by the expression that these tears weren’t driven by any kind of emotional turn. His whole face is as tense as a wire and the minute I look at him he’s unaccountably furious.

“Please take me home,” his voice clips like - we’re breaking up - on two ends of a cell rather than two inches - apart - before I can even ask him what’s the matter-

My mouth opens and closes again with a noiseless swallowing of my peace of mind - of my…

I turn and point my keys at the car to unlock the doors.

Watching Kattar get into the passenger seat feels like watching time have a heart attack - fall to pieces and bleed together - young face on an old man's body in a slow state of collapse like un-growing - degenerating.

The flowers un-sprout and are swallowed by the earth - right at the moment when they should have bloomed-

“What’s wrong?” 

It comes out anyway - and even though there’s a good chance it’s me -

I know I’m a jerk-

Even if I know I’ll regret his reaction, he has to know I cared enough to ask…

Fickleness, thy name is woman…

Isn’t it funny?

How I’m always in as much of a hurry to hurt him back as I am to reciprocate the love that he leaves to the imagination.

He’s staring face forward at the dashboard like he didn’t hear a word I said as I lift with my legs trying to heave his wheelchair into the trunk.

“Kattar.” 

He looks at me now as I slide into the driver's seat, “What’s going on? Do you have a headache?”

He looks like he plans to keep ignoring me, clenching and unclenching his whitened hands resting on the dashboard. The rocking has yet to stop.

“Kattar Moon-”

“I’m in a lot of pain, okay?!!!” He snaps now, glaring at me as his face changes colors like autumn leaves.

Like dying in timelapse.

And if today was…

But I know the difference between being unable to speak and choosing to ignore someone.

A lot of good words are on the tip of my tongue as I force myself to be calm.

“I don’t need the attitude, sir. If you’re feeling sick, just tell me.”

The color on his face turns from irritated to irate faster than anything  - I don’t think I ever seen him so-

“God! I didn’t come here to be scolded by a miniature version of my mom!!!”

I’m this close to crashing the car on purpose and taking both of us into the abyss-

His eyes are raging - flashing like a thousand demon-ish stars are all exploding in succession.

I feel the fire in my own face and that black-

“If you want to be treated like an adult then use your words, Kattar Moon. You have a tongue for a reason.” I feel myself slowly- “I’m an extremely flexible person. I’ll be anything you like, but I can’t be all of them at once. So, is this friendship or babysitting?! Pick one!”

He gets really quiet really fast, and I aggressively buckle my seat belt - shift out of ‘park.’

I can still see him breathing heavily, hands still resting where he left them, clenching and unclenching. You could almost hear a pin drop.

He mumbles something like ‘Only those two, eh?’ under his breath - the words virtually indiscernible through his accent. It might not even be English, honestly.

“What?”

No reply. And I don’t have the energy for this. Punching the radio, I queue up ‘oldie but a goodie’ listening to Nina Simone croon ironically about ‘feeling good’ for 0.3 seconds before Kattar snaps again-

“Could you please turn that off?”

“Fine,” I say, clicking the sound off at lightning speed. 

Then, hardly knowing what I’m doing, I pull off the route home and onto a side street, put the car back into 'park,' and fold my hands in my lap.

“No music?” I feel like a b- “Let’s talk then.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Your pain medication is in the back seat if that’s what you’re in such a tearing hurry to get home for, so we have all the time in the world. I have half a mind to leave you here, so I suggest you start pleading your case, Mr. Man.”

And even though he has to know I would never do that, I see a look on his face that surprises me - his own wide-eyed surprise evaporating into something - 

So now you take me seriously…

I could almost laugh if my throat wasn’t dammed to the choking with this furious-

Delicacy.

It takes his mouth two attempts to be able to say the word, but he gets it out.

In my experience it’s always the hardest one.

The rest come out more naturally after you swallow the pride blocking the way-

“I’m…sorry,” he sounds like he’s waking up from a bad dream, “I shouldn’t have talked to you like that.”

“I know. Good to see you’ve come back to your senses.”

“Okay,” he smiles a little awkwardly, “you can stop with the tough girl act now, I get it.”

The rocking still hasn’t-

“I know I hurt your feelings.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I stare at my shoes…

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me today…” Now he leans his head on his hand and stares at the window like it’s an opaque wall without a world beyond it. “I scared your little brother and his friend.”

“I think they got over it pretty fast,” I say quickly, wanting to change the subject all of a sudden-

It isn’t sudden - there’s a black expression in Kat’s eyes that seems to be bleeding into his face - turning it all a cadaver-ish hue…and it scares me.

“It’s kind of crazy how much Andrew has changed since the last time we met in person,” I sort of laugh, though I don’t want to. “I mean we’ve had video calls and sent pictures, but that’s nothing compared to the reality…”

Kattar just nods slowly - hearing me but thinking his own thoughts at the same time - his focus split down the middle.

I reach out and try to grab the fragment closest to me-

“To think he’s a businessman now,” Kat mumbles. “I didn’t even remember that he’d moved to Mexico. I’m so rusty at Spanish, trying to keep up was like sitting through my aunts’ family dinners all over again…”

Aunt?

I know there’s a whole lot about Kat that I don’t know but-

The shadow begs.

I know I shouldn’t say anything and I do anyway.

“I didn’t know you didn’t speak Korean.”

He turns and looks at me over his shoulder, not angrily, just blankly, with a sort of shrug.

“Why should I? My mother is Mexican.”

I mean duh.

He knows that I know that, but he insists on beating around the bush.

And that means one of us just has to say what we’re thinking.

Not it.

I find another way to skirt the real question.

“What did you do while you were in Korea for the music video shoot?”

“I used a translator like any other foreigner, ” He doesn’t even look at me, still staring at the glass-

I feel pin-pricked-

A thousand pin pricks-

But these roses…

Are immaculately, angelically, infallibly white.

“It’s not a foreign culture when it’s your father’s...”

He just shakes his head, “Tell that to my mom.”

I want to say something but for once my mouth knows better than to let me.

When I don’t reply Kat keeps talking, maybe for my benefit maybe - because he’s been waiting to get this off his chest - the words pour out like a monologue he’s been rehearsing for years-

“She never once told me I was biracial when I was a kid.” 

Alicia.

“When I was in grade school and the other Hispanic kids would tease me for my ‘Asian eyes’ she would tell me that her grandmother had eyes just like mine. I was always just her kid, a little, misfitting Mexican boy, and she so thoroughly “Mexican-ed” me, it was like she was making sure there was no space left in my being for anything that had to do with my dad.” Abstractedly he looks down at his right hand, rubbing the fingertips together. 

“I was like ten before I even knew my dad’s name. It’s not on my birth certificate. One of my mom’s friends mentioned it in passing. She’d,” There’s an unnatural pause, but without emotion, like the connection between his mouth and his brain dropped for an instant before he shrugs again with that same indifferent casualness.

“She cleaned every trace of him out of her little angel,” he smiles in my direction now with a brightness that is even more sickening as he almost laughs, his eyes disappearing into those semi-circles- “So I wouldn’t be contaminated, she said.”

An uncomfortable sort of dread washes over me.

No…

He’s still smiling, like he’s glitched again and his face is stuck like that - churning -

Has he even processed what he just said?

You can’t do that.

You can’t do that, right?

Just destroy or remove a whole half of your identity - of your child’s identity-

Why-?

“But…your last name…,” I stammer - stumbling again through the darkness of his immaculate - 

“If she meant to remove everything she missed a pretty obvious…”

“Moon is my mother’s maiden name,” he says softly, looking at me with something subtle like…

Pity?

Sympathy?

Because he’s so beyond being bothered by this…for his own sake, anyway.

“It’s a translation. We’re named after “Metzli,” this old Aztec god or goddess of the moon and the nighttime.”

Ah. But it suits her.

“They say one of our great-great-grandfathers was a priest or something.”

In the silence I pull back out of ‘park’ and onto the path home - Kattar keeps staring out the window, but his eyes don’t follow anything.

Out of nowhere, he speaks again, and I hear tears in his voice - like that night he told me how he wondered when - if - he ever met his father he would just ‘know-’

“The only experience I’ve ever had with Korean culture was this one year when my mom’s friend Jun invited us over to celebrate Chuseok with her family.”

He smiles blindingly through the tears starting their march down his cheeks-

“I still remember my mom coming to my room smiling, asking me, “Would you like to go have a Chuseok dinner at Jun’s house, darling? It could be fun to see how other cultures celebrate thanksgiving.”

I’m sure I look almost as sick to my stomach as he does - beaming, rambling-

“‘You’ll love it. You’re always interested in all kinds of foreign food and fashion.’”

“I’m-” my mouth starts to say.

“Don’t say you’re sorry, please.” He interrupts me, and I stare miserably at the steering wheel, wishing I could do something to undo-

Our lives. 

Both of us.

Could we just get new ones right now?

“I wish I could make you stop hurting.”

There’s a look on his face that burns me-

Through the tears, like glass drying on his cheeks and the blotchy miserable flush, spread like patches of melted rose - uneven gouache - painting his expression-

I just wish I could-

His whisper sounds like the voice of a creature long dead. “I know you do. Thank you.”

But he knows that I can’t. 

And I shouldn’t try.