constellation

i so wanted
to be connected to you

to trace the paths of stars
on your skin

i can still see how your eyes
were darker than the ocean

and reflected more
than i had ever seen

i so wanted
to lose myself in you

otherworldly

i hold a galaxy in my hands
it overflows
and spills stars like tears
between my shaking fingers
i squeeze too tight
it runs down my arms
soon nothing is left
but my empty palms

delicate

i know you like to take shallow soapy baths
filled with whole flowers you picked from the garden
petals spread out like fireworks and stick to your silk skin
you like it when i sit on the tiled floor next to you
sometimes you sing quiet love songs to me
my clothes get wet when you reach a thin arm over the tub
to smooth over my cheek and smile
our bathroom is pure white
but the afternoon sun washes everything in pale yellow
it feels like home
your hair only damp at the bottom
curl so beautifully around your soft eyes
pink lips like a bow curve at me
and you glow

my dear flora

your lips are roses
but only the thorns
and when i tried to kiss you
my flesh was ripped away

though i lay bleeding
i grabbed your wrist still

i would place my mouth on yours
despite my fresh blood
a million times more
so that once i may feel
the soft petals of your love

I once drank wine that tasted of you

dressed up like a hideous doll
a pristine black suit so crisp and new i thought it might snap my sternum
i am to sit still in the chair
the table moves and shakes
there must be laughter but what i hear is simply the beating of a dozen hearts
my only connection is a scattering of confetti through a wine glass
i do not speak
my joints are stiff as my starched shirt
what food lies beneath my gaze
on such a pretty plate trimmed in gold
makes me sick
i yearn for acknowledgement
only to be looked upon as if
i was part of the table's grand centerpiece
the whites and soft pinks of flowers
could just as easily be pierced through my skin
to mix with my tired blood
and create an array of colours so dazzling
as to compliment the crystal chandeliers
i do my duty as second to centerpiece
and my hands so neatly in my lap
though fingernails mark my palms

tell me who we are

We are the same.
Two reflections together abandoned.
Always striving to perfectly mimic the already perfect.
Until the person standing in front had noticed their other self in the mirror no longer moved as they did.
Instead us reflections dance disjointedly and try to consume what is in front of us.
Like the black liquid sea tries so hard to absorb the stars and become them.
A pretty picture so easily shattered by ripples created from a mere insect landing on its surface.
Just as we had been broken, when the perfection we wanted so badly to copy had turned so slightly to face us and seen our hungry jaws and extended arms.
Reaching for their skin, hair, eyes, and also what lay beneath the body.
The soul, perhaps.
And with their flawless fingers they pushed the mirrors we thrive inside.
Pushed them to the dirt and watched us both crack and then lay limp.
The last thing our desperate eyes had seen,
were those two broad backs turn away and walk, able to pull from our starved grasp as we both
ceased to move.
I looked to you, but your tears had already fallen down porcelain cheeks.
My throat was too paper thin to call out your sweet name.
I wanted to stretch my hand out to you but I was already long gone.

夜の涙

He never tells me when he's lonely, I know he doesn't want me to find out.
But the way he moves leaves an air of something empty, like a street after the rain stops.
His hands hold my cheeks and he stares into my eyes like his missing pieces are buried within my memories somewhere.
Our chests pressed so close together, hearts beating in tandem, each heart willing the other silently to never stop pumping.
Tears don't fall like raindrops, but more like candle wax, slowly down our faces, sliding and caressing.
They mingle with skin and sweat and are lost in bodies of emotion.
Time has no meaning at night, seconds pass like an eternity. The clock stops ticking and we might sleep forever if the sun didn't turn the night into another promise.

過去

The past trails after me as a cluster of memories that have failed to be forgotten.
They grasp my sleeves, wanting to hold me close, wanting to touch my face and kiss my eyes closed.
In the nothingness of nighttime, they sit aside my bed, indenting the covers, gazing, with hands made of old moments and goodbyes, they smooth down my skin and push pins through my eyelids.
They split my chest open with knives made of spilled tears and pull away the flesh like I have pulled away from living.
My heart doesn't beat, it lays as a place holder for the promise of days to come. My ribs, cracked yet still solid, cradle it fondly, protecting it from what the world has to offer.
Those hands scratch at me, squeeze the breath right from my lungs, pull my organs like they would pull a thread through a sewing needle.
My blood runs warm and gentle, it stains everything I've ever had.
When sunlight shines across the room and I am no longer a corpse of the night, those memories with their familiar fingers and unsettling presence once more fall behind me to create a shadow of who I once was and who I long to be once more.

being alive at night

The silence of darkness.
The silence of sleep.
The silence of my mind racing.
When the sky above me turns to milky opaqueness dotted with specks of light, I stretch my arm out to line my fingers up with the constellations. They play around my hand with silver lined clouds in tail. They are air and water and tiny droplets of starlight.
Each little droplet could contain a million animals or a million people or a million cities. They are a million seconds apart from each other and a lifetime away from me. 
I can close my hand, dig my fingers into my palm and grab a handful of those dancing drops and pull them into me.
Absorb those animals and people and cities and all the love they share between them. An innumerable amount of love. A million different kinds.
Love for the morning, love for cold soup, love for ripped sweaters, love for worms that dry up on the sidewalk, love for books with cracked spines, love for walking through the snow, love for cigarette smoke, love for sadness, love for paper cuts, love for forgetting a word, love for dead people, love for alive people, love for you and for me. 
Love for us, individually and together.

las estrellas fugaces que ví en aquella noche.

I have dreams of memories that are not my own.

I walk through rooms worn with years, they are dull and dusty.

I run my hands across the cracked baroque wallpaper that surrounds me.

The patterns touch and connect, leading me to a forgotten place.

Porcelain sheets adorn the tired bed in place of perfection, pillows lay in wait for eyes to close on top of them.

Pictures of people that have lived so much life hang like bodies.

They melt and weep down the walls.

They weep for me and for themselves.

The window that bathes everything in twisting streams of soft light is open, but veiled by a fragile curtain that doesn't move.

Through that curtain, through the intricate map of cracks in the cold glass, I see the night sky.

It's dark and opaque but still bright, and somehow the stars still flicker and dance across the horizon.

Surely, this sky is the same as the one I see in my waking world.

Surely, this sky will embrace me.

Yo tengo recuerdos. Mis recuerdos.

laughing in the water

there's a man at the bottom of the sea.

his hair does not sway gently, moving like threads in the

comforting currents.

his skin is not moist and ashen like porcelain.

his hands do not grasp the sand and grit, fingers running

through grains like time.

his eyes are not shining nor limpid, soul concealed

underneath them.

his voice is not smooth when he sings, 
laughs and cries alike trapped in the unlit murkiness.

rather, he lays there, still as silence, among the forgotten.

a glassy gaze forever trying to see past the surface.

the sun illuminates his face.

he floats his words to the surface in a million bubbles,

waiting for someone to catch them.

he melts into water, form dissipating,

remnants of him buried.

he is waiting for me.

the way we were.

I remember when my father used to carry me up the stairs after I had fallen asleep on the living room floor. Next to the window I lay, watching the stars twinkle until I was lulled to sleep by the night's silence.

He carried me quietly, tiptoeing up the steps with my loose body in his arms. I always woke up when he reached the very top, but I never opened my eyes. I continued my feigned slumber and let him tuck me in because I knew it made him happy. He would support me with one shaky arm while pulling the covers back with the other. He laid me to rest and drew the blanket up almost to my neck. I kept my breathing steady as he brushed the hair from my face and placed it behind my ears.

When he retreated his hand, he would stand there for a time, not moving, maybe staring. He did nothing, but shortly after I would hear his footsteps and the click of the door closing. I was still, deathly still, until I was sure he had left and gone back downstairs.

I would sit up and slowly get out of bed, moving to the large window that overlooked the street. Opening it carefully, I climbed out onto the roof silently and sat directly in front of the window sill. The roof's slope was soft, so I didn't slide off. The old shingles rubbed against my pants, leaving pieces of themselves all over me. I tried not to shift my feet too much as any small movement made a gravelly type of noise that sounded a hundred times louder in the night.

Most nights, the boy from next door would join me till dawn, observing the sky and ground. All the houses in our neighborhood were not three feet from each other, allowing him to jump over to my roof from his with little effort. He sat close to me and sometimes we held hands. Together, we watched the road below, the street lamp and the flickering of house lights. The stars shimmered above us, scattered like glass on the sky and dimmed by the lights seeping from deep within the distant city.

To the left we could turn our heads and see the school. We were in the same class but didn't talk often. Only when we reached middle school did we really get to know each other. We walked to school on the foggy mornings together, and returned the same way. We sat, backs to our lockers at lunch time, sharing the food our mothers had packed for us.

On weekends, we bussed to the city and adventured around downtown all day. We got ice cream and window shopped. When we got tired, we would sit outside the coffee shop looking at people pass by and drinking iced black tea. He would laugh at the lady with a strange hat, the stern looking business man with a stained shirt, the child that tripped and cried. I would smile and examine his delicate laugh lines. He would say, 'Why is everyone in such a hurry?' while leaning back in his chair.

We usually arrived home at twilight and he would spend the night at my house. We laid on our sides, face to face on my narrow bed. I was pressed against the wall and we held hands. As we tried to fall asleep in the early hours of dawn, the sun glowed red through the venetian blinds and he sang in a hushed tone,

'Good night, good night,

The stars again,

Are shining so bright,

Sleep with no fear,

with good, happy dreams,

I'll still be here,

When morning comes,

I'll still be near,'

My eyes would slide shut and I would dream of him. When I woke up in the afternoon, he would be beside me dozing peacefully, our fingers still entwined. I pressed my forehead against his and listened to his rhythmic sighs. When he opened his eyes a short time later, we would make our way downstairs to eat and watch the sun shine through the kitchen window. We talked about anything, everything. Our family, our experiences, our interests, ourselves.

Nothing changed when we entered high school. We spent our first and second years much the same as we had for the longest time.

However, something was different in our third year. He had made more friends and even joined a club, I'm not sure which. At breaks and lunch time, I would sit outside or in the library and read. He stopped coming and I stopped bringing lunch.

On weekends, I wouldn't see him. I walked the city streets alone, or stayed home and counted the birds that landed in the trees. On nights I spent on the roof, I sat by myself and sometimes saw him come home late, strolling down the sidewalk and making his way to the front door of his house. I always wondered where he had been, what he had been doing, who he was with.

When we talked, it was about meaningless things. What we had learned in class, a book I read last week, the nice weather. I wondered when our conversations became so dull, when he had stopped being there, when I had stopped caring. When did we drift so far?

In March, a month from graduation, my father died.

He didn't come to the funeral. I saw the light from his room when I climbed up on the roof the night of the funeral. It was cold. My breath froze as I sang almost soundlessly,

'The stars again, are shining so bright,'

I could hear my mother crying through the open window of the bedroom that now belonged only to her. Sobbing, moving, breaking.

'I'll still be here,'

An ever bright moon shone a crescent above the trees, sometimes obscured by clouds that moved across the horizon. They were grey and wispy, edges illuminated. I shrugged off my suit jacket. It slid from me, down the roof and onto the grass, a black heap.

'When morning comes,'

He shut his curtains and his room went dark, I knew he had gone to sleep. My eyes watered and my throat became too tight. My voice was uneven and thick.

'I'll still be near. . .'

to remain?

'Son,' my father said, and I didn't turn my head. We were driving in the dark, the streetlights made dancing shadows on the seats, a constant pattern of light, dark, light, dark as we passed them. The shine of other car's headlights reached through the windshield to touch our faces, then disappeared. The heater was on full power, warming my feet, burning them, and it felt good. I squished my toes together in my boots to make my hot skin sting.

Resting against the window, I was a part of it. My hair, cheek, lips, melted into the glass and I was cold as the snow that flew past. My breath no longer fogging and condensing, but vanishing, my body slowly crystallizing.

'Son,' my father repeated, shattering the glass me. My eyes slid to the side and I saw his face, pointed directly forwards, concentrating on the road in front, not looking at me. The flickering patterns of the shadows gave him chilling angles on his nose, eyes and temples. I averted my gaze to the outside and had no choice but to answer. I tried to keep my voice as steady as possible.

'Yes?'

I could hear his head turn to look at me, the sound of his coat collar rubbing against his neck was sharp. I didn't want our eyes to meet so I kept my attention on the world outside the car. It flew by so quickly, I wanted to catch it. I could feel my father's stare, it was unsettling, like a stranger whispering in my ear.

'I hate you.'

To say I wasn't shocked would be a lie. But it wasn't the fact that he hated me that was surprising. I had known that since I was a child. However, that he had said it aloud caught me off guard completely. My father never expressed his opinion, or emotion, or anything for that matter. He wasn't like a cool, stony and stoic character from a book or movie, more so he was annoyingly hard to read. When he said anything, it was a command, devoid of any feeling.

I have always lived in uneasiness with my father. Avoiding his gaze, his touch, his few words, never allowing myself to have any attachment to him, emotional or otherwise. I'm a coward, never being able to stand up to him, to disagree or even say a thing back to him.

When he would stare sternly at me as I ate my food, looking for mistakes. I would shakily lift the food to my mouth, acutely aware of his gaze cutting into me and absolutely terrified of accidentally dropping something or dripping. He stared while he ate, and finally one time said,

'Don't hold your chopsticks like that, you're not a child anymore.'

His voice was smooth, cold, and it made me stop, stilled like a statue while still holding my bowl, my hand almost trembling. The way he had said it, as if purposely trying to point out a flaw, any flaw he could find, using a voice that could have paralyzed any man, prevented me from eating. And even to this day I cannot eat anything in his presence, avoiding him when he's home, only being able to enter the kitchen when I'm sure he's out.

That, and many other similar instances have caused me to hide from him whenever possible. Stealthily moving through the house, quietly, swiftly, ghosting the walls and halls so he doesn't notice my being there. Only facing him when it's necessary, only speaking when spoken to. Many times I have considered running away and I laugh at the fact that it would probably take him a week to notice my absence. Unfortunately, as I am now, a senior in high school with a low paying job at a twenty-four hour coffee shop, it would be impossible to continue living successfully away from home.

Despite all that, I had no choice but to agree when he had asked me, standing directly in front of me and glowering at my bowed head, to go with him for a drive. I didn't question his destination or reasoning for suddenly asking me, and because of that I had ended up in my current situation. A long known statement, a monster, and a good for nothing. All together in a car, driving driving driving, then stopped.

It took me a moment to realize he had parked the car. We sat on the shoulder of the road, not two metres from the brightly lit bridge that connected the two sides of the city split by a wide and violent river. It was black, but the city was reflected on the surface.

My father turned his body towards me and I could hear his jacket scrape against the car seat. I wanted to look at him, to see his expression, but all I could do was keep my eyes fixed on my hands rested in my lap. I heard a click, a metallic click. A gun's click.

'I'm going to shoot you now. I'm going to shoot you and I hope you die.'

There was a long pause. I gathered the courage to turn my head, slowly, very slowly. My eyes were unable to reach him before he pulled the trigger. He shot me in the stomach, not the head or heart, but near my stomach. The bullet went right through me and lodged in to the seat. I swallowed and felt blood move its way up my throat. I reached a shaky arm over to the door and opened it, leaving the vehicle to enter the cold outdoors. My father didn't stop me. He didn't say anything.

I took an unsteady step to the direction of the bridge, my arms encircling my midsection. I didn't feel anything except for the blood flowing out of me, staining my jacket and hands forever. I made my way onto the bridge gradually, carefully walking on the snow, looking out towards the other side of the city. I coughed once or twice, red dripping down my lips and chin, the blowing snowflakes and my hair sticking to it, making my face frozen and messy. I couldn't taste it.

I made it nearly halfway before I fell. My legs became weak and then crumbled, taking me with them. I didn't notice I had fallen till I felt ice caressing my forehead and cheeks, red mixing with white. I unwrapped my stiff arms and with great difficulty and pushed myself into a sitting postion, my back leaning on the bridge's railing. I was breathing hard now, my breath coming out as liquid and as fog. My hands lay limply by my sides, I grabbed snow and pebbles and dirt and death and squeezed them between my numb fingers.

I looked up, the lights shined so bright, blindingly, fragile flakes twirled in front of them. The landed on me, my eyelashes, my nose, my teeth, my heart. They were inside me, filling me with bitter frost. They spilled out red. I was dying. I knew this, and this brought about a pain, a searing pain, a crippling pain.

Nothing but pain. No sadness or regret or remorse or anger. Just simple pain, and it hurt. It hurthurthurtsomuchIcouldbarelystandit.

I wanted to cry, to feel warm tears on my face, but they came out cold. Cold and red and painful.

I was dying.

Dying,dying,dying,death,dead.

I don't want to die I don't want to die I don't wantIdon'twantIdon'twantIdon't

Death.

because i

i sometimes wondered what she was thinking

when she sat on the bed and watched me pretend to sleep

and i wondered if she loved me

and if she wanted to hurt me

and if she wanted to leave

and i wanted to ask her

but then

i wrapped my arms around her

around her

neck

and i straddled her and i

looked into her wide eyes

and i

smiled and

i thought that if we were to have sex we

would be doing it that way but my hands

my hands would be running up her torso

squeezing her breasts touching her stomach not

around her neck squeezing the breath out of her

and she gripped my wrists with her small

small hands her fingers are so pretty

and nails cut into me her legs

moved

under me

her smooth hair was splayed on the bed sheets getting

tangled getting disheveled her

eyes were wet and my eyes were wet too

and that wetness rolled off my cheeks

it hit her it fell onto her dress

and her forehead and into her mouth

and she choked on it and she

choked on my fingers

crushing her

and she

was crushed

and she stopped forever

and i stopped

but i kept moving and i'm not human anymore

and even in hell there's

no place for a thing such as me

there is no punishment long enough

in forever

for me

so i will live

i am alive

i live with my memory

of her and what i did to her and what i wanted to do with her

and she doesn't

and

never again

does she

so i am alone and and and end

here,

君と僕、

いっしょに、

いつも、

いつも、

君のために、

星たちは笑っている、

僕の口から

嘘が落ちる、

きっと、

君の涙が冷たい

sometimes love.

I try to look at the photos of us

The one time we ever did

It was cold and the snow

didn't sparkle

Our hands touched

Our faces touched

And I can only wish

that our lips had touched too

I fell for you then

Love

Infatuation

Unrequited

What is it I wonder

A horrible pain in

My eyes, head, finger tips

Chest

Heart

I'll never tell you

I'll never see you

I'll forget you

the chords of my last breath.

You're holding me close to your chest, close to your heart. I can hear the rhythm of your body, it's a metronome in my ears. Your arms are cradling me and I can see your face looking down to me. Brows scrunched together, eyes clouded, mouth slightly parted. Your face is sticky with tears and the sun behind you illuminates the drops clinging beautifully to your eyelashes. Your hair is disheveled, clothes dusty and your breath coming out in soft sobs.

I want to reach my hand up to you, dry your eyes, push your hair behind your ear. But my fingers, my hands, they are cold as clay and I can barely keep the breath in my lungs. I want to say something, I want to open my mouth, let my voice free. My body does not cooperate. It feels as if my throat is gone.

I see your hand move to my face. It's red with blood. My blood. You rest it on my cheek, stroking it ever so gently. It feels wet, almost sticky. You look so sad, staring at me as I lay motionless in your arms. Your lips are moving, words escaping them. I hear nothing but the silence of my own thoughts spilling out of my head to disappear.

I think about how you're safe now. And how the ending of my life is, even if just this once, able to prevent anything from happening to you. Dying to protect someone I love, someone who is my everything, someone who I need. Dying to protect you.

I love you, and I think that this isn't such a bad way to die. My only regret being that you have to be here, watching, experiencing me slowly lose my life. And that I have to leave you behind. I'm so sorry.

We gaze into each other's eyes, into each other's souls, and with the last of my strength, I manage to lift my mouth into a small smile.

My eyelids feel so heavy, and against my will, they start to slide shut. There is only darkness when my eyes finally close, but I hang onto the memory of you as I fade away.

some days are just for us.

It was a damp kind of day. The weather outside cold, dark, mostly dreary. The kind of day where you just don't feel like doing anything.

We decided it was the perfect opportunity to skip class. We sat at the stairwell. On top of the heater that was in the middle where the doors to the outside were. Where the second set of stairs started and the first ended. It sat against the wall, about a meter tall and wide. The heater was hot on our legs and we rested our hands on the edge, shifting every so often so we wouldn't get burned. Our shoulders, arms, thighs pressed against one another, we sat close so we didn't fall off. We leaned into each other and it was comfortable.

He was holding a book, reading off a paragraph word by word out loud. His voice smooth, only stuttering or mispronouncing a few times. He read with a pleasant fluidity and it echoed off the brick walls that surrounded us.

I was staring at the book, following his voice on the page but also trying to fight off sleep. I was tired and he was so warm and I wanted to close my eyes right there, but I continued to listen.

Times like these, times spent with just the two of us seemed to become more and more rare as he got busier. He worked hard at everything he did, while I just moved through the days. It was difficult to find spare moments in which we could be together, so we took every chance we could. It seemed he was leaving me behind, so I clung to him, savouring and enjoying every instant.

I sighed deeply and rested my head on his shoulder so I could still see the book but I was closer to him, even if just by a little. It felt good and right to have his body heat mingle with mine. He stopped reading to let out a long yawn. His body stiffened then relaxed slightly as he exhaled loudly.

'I'm tired,' he said, while rubbing his eye, one hand still holding the book.

'Me too,' I replied, watching the novel slip from his grasp and fall to the tiled floor, splayed in the middle and pages bent.

'Damn.'

We looked at each other. I observed the way his eyes fluttered as he blinked. Perfectly almond shaped eyes, almost almond in color as well, framed by long but sparse lashes. His hair was sweeped to the side but still managed to obscure most of his pretty left eye.

He lifted a hand up and gently pushed my hair away from my cheek to my ear. His fingers were cold on my skin.

Slowly, so slowly, his face came nearer to mine. His hand was on me, fingertips ghosting my cheek. His lips pressed against mine and I leaned in.

Our kiss was short, and it left a sort of fleeting feeling in my stomach. Something akin to nervousness or maybe happiness. He pulled away, hand not moving from my cheek. I stared at him, then smiled.

'Does this mean we're gay?'

He laughed and it sounded so good running through my ears.

'Not entirely?' We laughed together and it made me happier than it should have.

He slid off the heater and grabbed my hand to pull me down as well. We walked up the second flight of stairs holding hands, fingers intertwined, leaving the fallen book to be forgotten.

you.

I think about you.
I think about you a lot.
So much so, I think my head might overflow.
Memories spilling from my ears, nose, mouth, eyes. Everywhere. Seeping from my skin.
As they did when you died.
I remember that day. Every action, every word, in verbatim. The months leading up to it as well.
In fact I remember all the time we spent together, all those years.

But in a way, I remember none of it. I remember in that blurry, fading way that memories come in. Moments are hazy, and I realize with a slow panic, that your face is also gradually disappearing from my mind.
Bit by bit, as the years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds go by, a piece of you dissolves.
I try to keep you alive in my head. I pick one memory of a time spent with you, and try to recall every detail of it.

My favourite memory of you. The one I want to replay in my head over and over and over so I never forget. The one I think about most often.

That night we walked down Main Street, our shoulders touching, pushing against each other. A gentle rain made the streets and buildings shine with the soft golden light of the street lamps. We strolled down the sidewalk, admiring the houses and trees that looked so different in the day. Their true, obscure beauty only showing itself in the black of night. Your words froze in the air as you spoke of your day. I watched you intently, the way your mouth moved, the way your eyes seemed to reflect any light that hit them, the way your face was illuminated so that I could see every peculiarity. You looked at me, I could see myself in your eyes. You asked if I was listening, a smile dancing on your lips.

But where were we headed?
Why were we there?
These things I cannot remember.

That happens a lot.
The little things that I forget, they haunt me. Why can't I recall them? Are they unimportant? Are they meant to be forgotten?
These things that seem so insignificant at the time, I never would have imagined that I would want to hold on to them so desperately. That I would want to seek comfort in them.
Alas, they are gone from my mind.
---

When you told me you were going to die, I didn't believe you. I didn't want to believe you. The thought of losing you, you who is most precious to me, you who is my only escape from this world, was unfathomable to me. However, as time passed all too quickly I could see your body, your reality deteriorate.
I spent everyday with you. Nothing else mattered to me then. I took you places and talked to you. A change of places of sorts, as you were usually the one to speak while I listened attentively, drinking in your words. And it was you who took me out, to show me this world and let me witness all the tiny miracles happening around me.

Three or so months from the day you told me, and exactly one week from the day you died, we went to the beach together.
We walked from your apartment, hand in hand, to make sure you didn't stumble or bump into something. You were so weak then, slender and fragile, gripping on to my hand. Your eyes weren't all there. Unfocused and cloudy. You weren't all there, and I can only hope that, at that time, your mind was in a better place. So it wouldn't have to observe the state you body was in. It hurt my heart to see you in such a way. A dull, nagging pain that made me want to fall to my knees and grasp my chest.

We sat on the fine white sand, a few feet from the water. The ocean played a soothing melody of back and forth and back and forth waves. The sea foam almost reached our feet, but never quite got there. The quiet wind brushed your hair into your eyes.
You smiled. A small, dainty smile. A smile nonetheless.
I wanted to cry.

I took out a bottle from my cardigan's pocket. It was a bottle of bubbles. The brand we always got when we were younger. It was a powder blue bottle, no longer than my index finger. It was the one you had gotten me for my birthday last year. You told me you bought them because I had recently said I loved bubbles. I promised never to use it unless it was a special occasion and you said that was a waste.

I unscrewed the cap. For some reason, that moment, right then, seemed like the perfect chance to use them. I dipped the wand in the soapy water, held it up and placed my lips to it. I blew carefully, and watched as a stream of perfect bubbles came flowing out. The wind carried them up, up, up, till they seemed to spin in front of the sun. They shone like something precious, colours moving around them, they sparkled in our eyes.
Amazing.
I kept blowing more. The way something so simple created such a magnificent display was spellbinding to me.
Something in you seemed to come back. A light in your eyes. You calmly grasped my hand that was holding on to the bubble wand. Your hand enclosed mine. You brought the wand up to your face and blew. Another parade of bubbles came floating out, but these ones were different. They were more brilliant than any of the ones I had made. It was like a sliver of you was in every one of those bubbles. They were more graceful and more dazzling than anything I had ever seen.

We blew bubbles until the bottle ran empty. I dug a hole in the sand beside me and placed both the wand and bottle inside. I stood up. took hold of your hand and pulled you up next to me. We walked back home as the sun was threatening to set.
---

The day you died, it was quiet. The sun was bright, the clouds were nowhere to be seen. It wasn't just quiet, it was silent. As if the whole world, as if time itself was peacefully mourning.
I was beside you, like I've always been.
I touched your hand, I looked at your face.
You didn't move.
You were resting.


And I hope that you are having a good dream.

goodbye, lover.

The time has come for me to leave.

To quietly walk away from your side, disappear without a word.

You're content. You laugh like you mean it and your head spins with the miracles that run through it.

I have come to accept my circumstances, my destiny, if you will.

My fate to be in a disjointed, seperate place from you. Empty and detached I will become, never again to see you in the same light. We now live in two contrasting worlds.

Yours filled with the feeling of newly found love and the brighter side of everything. It's glowing and colorful and it pulls at the side of me that wants to be okay.

My world is a far cry from the warmth of yours. It is sunless and obscure and bitter. The coldness of my regret numbing me so that I am unable to be reached by the undesired kindness that flows from you.

I escape it.

I am alone, but not lonely. I live within myself, surrounded by the recollections of our time. They swirl inside me, behind my eyes, in my ears, under my skin.

I cage them, they remain fluttering fragments of memories.

And I can live with just that. The person I created in my mind, birthed from the you of the past.

I will watch you grow, watch you feel, watch you experience. I will stand away from you, veiled and sequestered, and I will watch you be happy.