My brain feels like a dirty sink-
Swirling with residue - bits and pieces of all things distasteful that refuse to drain away.
Please don’t…
I feel cold all over and even my shadows-
Are afraid of curling up in the dark and being alone with my thoughts.
I want to go home…
But this is home, and that’s so horrifying I could cry, rubbing my shoulders, trying to forget today - trying to convince myself I’m in a bad dream, and everything Kattar said was just the brainchild of my twisted imagination.
The chill shouldn’t be this heavy.
It’s very possible his mother never meant anything by it…it was just a poor choice of words. A force of habit - after all - Korea is foreign to her. She only spent less than a year-
There’s a line in a book - a children’s book-
Tied to anything that had to do with that small slice of the globe.
Except that she didn’t.
She spent so much longer-
She had a child and spent 28 years-
Shouldn’t she have learned something or found some way to teach him about who he was?
Nothing in me could believe…she didn’t have her reasons-
But at the same time.
Seeing that look on Kattar’s face.
Couldn’t there have been another way?
That expression in his eyes paints itself on the walls of my mind like impossibly fragile - tinted windows-
For one second there was nothing hidden-
I’m absolutely sure he let me see through him and into that abyss-
And I should have done - something -
I needed to-
Hug him - comfort him-
Gosh, if only we hadn’t been driving!
The stupidity of it all is maddening-
-hold him tight.
Everything in me just-
But I stop myself.
Because we’re not a real couple.
It’s a common mistake.
But even that pain feels ages away now. Kattar’s pain is too thick - taking up miles and light years of real estate in the memory like maybe-
Maybe it’s been burning him away for as long as I’ve known him.
Longer still, probably.
Turning to my easel I set up a clean canvas and mix two little pools of acrylic - a cocoa brown bath and a baby pink one - so much more delicate than I can fathom - and I touch my brush to the canvas.
This is laughable.
The petals melt into themselves - too much water - collapsing faster than I can convince them there’s a reason to keep trying to be beautiful - each one perfectly defective from the first second of their conception-
There will be no fruit.
The tree is broken.
It’s dying.
And I don’t know how to fix it. How to save it -
So I leave it to keep weeping. Falling to pieces like blushing ashes falling from the top of the canvas to the base like the burning rain and embers after a wildfire-
And go to bed.
*
Plopping into the cold sheets I let my linen swallow me - or absorb me.
I feel more like an essence than a being - an idea - like I could fall asleep and be reborn as exhaustion or depression incarnate-
Is that slot already taken?
Oizys was the Greek goddess of anxiety, depression, and grief - but if I dare to consider myself beautiful, maybe Melpomene is a bit closer to my cup of misery.
Nabbing my phone off my nightstand I stare blankly at the time.
9:30.
Go to sleep. Go to sleep.
“Hey, are you ready for bed yet?”
His status switches to online almost immediately.
He must have already been on his phone.
“Yeah. I’m ready for bed every night by 7:30 cuz the caregivers come to help me at 7-”
I bite my lip.
“I wasn’t planning to go to sleep any time soon, though.”
My frown relaxes somehow - starts to defy gravity.
My phone is a sainted circle, keeping the curses in the shadows back.
“You’ve always been a night owl.”
“Wrong. I’m a vampire lol.”
I smirk a little.
“Do you remember when we used to lay on the floor in the dark and talk until one of us passed out?”
“It was always you.”
“Fine, fine.”
The darkness seems to get a little closer.
“I used to tell you everything back then,” I sigh a little. “I hadn’t realized there was so much I didn’t know about you.”
There's a long pause, and I wish so badly - we were laying side by side in the dark again - not just laying in the dark - letting it hem us in on all sides-
“To be fair,” the sentence fragment comes before the rest of the thought, like an over-eager lizard that left its tail behind-
“To be fair, I think there were a lot of things I didn’t know about myself, cuz whenever those thoughts or feelings came up, I just tried to push them down and ignore them.”
The-
I have to ask-
“Did you do the same thing with your feelings for me? Ignore them?”
“I couldn’t ignore them.”
I want to breathe but there’s water in my mouth.
I don’t believe you…
But he prattles on.
“It was basically impossible not to think about it when you were practically living at my house throughout high school and I saw you every day.”
The words bubble up, and pour out miserably, like sudden vomit:
“Didn’t you like that?”
“I did, but it was stressful too. Like living on a tightrope.”
“A tightrope?”
Pause.
“Can we just call?”
Please no no no.
But my hands say ‘yes-’
My mind - slurs ‘no’ and ‘yes’ together into an anxious-
I just want to hear his voice.
I just really really want to hear his voice right now.
The phone barely has time to tell me he read the message before it starts ringing- but to my surprise, it’s a video call.
“Oh great,” I redden anxiously, pulling my blanket up over my tatty nightgown before I accept the call.
When I do, my screen lights up with the upper half of Kat’s body - white tee-shirt almost glowing in the odd diffused light - part of one arm raised above his head holding the phone, the other resting on his forehead. He’s lying on his bed amongst the almost black-pink linen - his hair spread out about his head like an ebony hurricane.
“Why would you choose to do a video call? Your arm’s going to be so sore in the morning.” I laugh.
“Ahh, I thought you’d still be lounging on that nasty couch of yours,” he chuckles, “But it’s been a while since I've been to the gym so this is my workout. I’m just going to have one buff tricep.”
I laugh at that but notice him looking at the phone like he’s reading something.
“Give me a second…” he says half to himself. “Oh, yeah…the tightrope…”
Rather than looking back at the screen, he rolls his eyes back like he’s staring at the headboard with something like an exhausted sigh.
“Was it that stressful?”
“You have no idea,” he almost laughs. “I was so on edge. Trying not to let you know that I liked you but not wanting you to think I didn’t like you-”
He says this so cheerfully, mocking his former self as he smiles up to his eyes, that I can’t help but smile too, just a little.
“You should have just told me-” I say with loving annoyance and exasperation.
“I was like, oh, better make sure I look properly annoyed about receiving these love notes or she might think I’m interested in these girls…”
It eats at me…
To be honest…
I need him to be honest.
“Did you really not find a single other girl pretty the whole time you’ve known me?”
He looks me in the face now, like he’s almost offended by the question, and even through the screen, holding my gaze with that firm, unflinching sincerity - the expression pierces clean through-
“I didn’t say I’d never found anyone else pretty, Alicia. But you’re the only girl I’ve ever wanted to be with.”
I…
Wish he’d said no.
For his sake.
I have to cover my face, feeling the waterworks start again - from that unending fountain-
“I’m sorry…”
His face washes over with worry and confusion, but I go on - before he can speak - my voice a tortured whisper…
“You waited for me for fifteen years, but I…went and…”
I can’t make the words come out - too nauseated to regurgitate the-
Memory tastes vile in my mouth…
And I’ve tried to wash it out but-
“It’s okay,” he says softly, and his tone reminds me of his mother. Cooing, almost trilling. Like I’m a baby and he’s trying put me to sleep or convince me -
There are no monsters under the bed.
“You don’t have to feel bad for me Alicia…it,” there’s a long pause when he sees I’m not going to stop crying. “I know you regret Etan.”
“I’m such an idiot. I was so stupid…”
I don’t think I’m talking to him anymore. It feels like a hurricane.
And I don’t know.
Why there are never enough tears to cry about this-
No matter how many times I shatter - break to pieces - cry until I think I couldn’t be more miserable-
I can always always do it again the next time I let myself think.
“I don’t even know why I…”
The sobs break the words to pieces and drown them - dissolve-
“I didn’t even realize how upset you must have been. I thought you just hated Etan. because he was a jerk. and were angry about my poor taste…”
He smiles a little anxiously, his eyes begging me to smile with him.
“I was angry. But I was stupid too,” his smile falters just slightly, “If I had just said something sooner, we…you never would have…”
He stops suddenly, looking off to the side with a pensive expression.
“What?”
He…
“I’m not sure I want to undo it.”
“What???”
He shakes his head as if he almost disbelieves the words coming out of his own mouth as he says them.
“If-if you hadn’t dated Etan, you never would have painted the “Damsel in the Red Dress.” You never would have won the award or made your museum exhibit-”
“-But you wouldn’t have been paralyzed.”
God-
I could die right now just to shut myself up. I see him wince even before the word is finished, but even behind the pain, there’s a question…asking if it has to just be misery or if maybe-
“Would you have been my girlfriend if I’d asked you out before Etan did?”
That feels so painfully obvious but I answer anyway-
“Of course, I would’ve…”
He reddens suddenly - with an expression that’s almost t-
“Will you be mine now?”
My heart literally stops, but I say quicker than anything-
“Yes.”
The relief that washes over his face is more than enough to make me wish-
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so pretty as he smiles up to his eyes, that sweet, rosy color again-
“Then I’m happy with this. I don’t need to change anything.”
For a second I’m so stunned-
But he’s so genuine, beaming like a miniature star-
Then I watch the look on his face soften…
-And if I could catch this firefly in a bottle and trap this bottle in time-
I hope I can always remember him looking at me with such gentle, unbridled, unmasked affection.
“You have no idea how much I’m in love with you,” he breathes, shaking his head like he can hardly believe it himself.
And-
I think I want to keep repeating this moment for the rest of my life.
Please.
He kisses two fingers now and touches them to the screen saying softly, “I’m so dead tired now. I need to get some sleep. Goodnight, Lise.”
I don’t know what else to do but echo his “Goodnight”- watching his pretty face disappear from the glass - and fall asleep -
Letting Loneliness and Sweet Dreams marry in the silence.
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