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all at once, her widowed eyes harbouring every emotion from the deep trenches of time. like under her skin, those thin sheets of glass, resounded faint echoes of birthmark beliefs and unattainable desires. she was a fragile, crooked love; fading faithless and all too fast.
all the women, all the girls you ever loved in your short existence, behaved the same way. they move in tandem with the moon’s orbit, the shifting prismatic patterns of light along walls of calcium; slip through your fingers like water. every era of love you chased after, a shard of glass that could possibly plug the gaping hole through your gut, eluded your grasp and scattered into tiny fireworks.
therefore, you know how this will end. the same way as before, a letter drafted a thousand times over, to her, then to yourself, then to no one at all. you always remember the way you are left questioning what was seen and what was believed;
whether you at least left something behind to be remembered by. a parting gift, an afterimage, a trail of gasoline. something to set their heart alive and reduce it to rubble.
you inch closer, your own body over hers, the space between your noses glittering with body warmth. watch the ends of your hair tumble and kiss the sides of her face, those bronze edges against alabaster skin. the colour of her skin, a relic of day-old dreams you recounted in now incinerated diaries. it smells of sun-dried duvets, void of cracks where traces of her soul could possibly seep through. you want it stained.
you trace a thumb over the skin under her eyes, wishing to burn new tattoos, in the shape of her facial features, onto the walls of her amygdala; draw the curve of her cheekbone, her downturned lids,
the frown hanging from her lips like a waning crescent. soft, softly killing.
everything you have ever loved, everything you have ever hungered and chased after; has escaped through the gaps between your fingers like sand. those edgeless crystals, blown away by the storms of passing time. but your body will be cemented deep in the centre of the earth, somewhere under the seabed, and a pulse may even still be heard if they call out your name three times.
you hoped she was different from the rest, searched for the unknown and the unsettling in her eyes. the light within her gaze that pulled you in was how all your stories began: faint, ephemeral, veiled in an evening mist. a dormant flame that exists to warm and not to blind. you like things that couldn’t hurt you. you like things that grant you flushes of warmth, often lasting no longer than five minutes.
you like things that are crushed beneath your own weight.
your name, muffled through the water, sounds like an oracle on her tongue. your head shoots up and emerges from the surface with a splash, water spilling out of the hot tub and creating dark patches on the stone floor.
pomni stands at the entrance of the hot springs, her hand resting awkwardly on the wooden frame of the sliding door.
she says nothing.
your lips part. they seal themselves back shut. then: “did you call for me?”
she glances at you for a moment — an unfamiliar emotion, whirring with something vivid and vicarious — and looks away. “i’m sorry. i forgot what i’d wanted to say.”
she is still, her hand frozen in place on the door. you bite down on your lip. wait.
cross your fingers in the water.
send a prayer, hoping she chooses to stay.
wait.
“i know i asked to talk with you,” she continues, “but now i’m not sure what there is to talk about anymore.”
the sound of running water from afar fills your ears, a blackened white noise that lodges thorns in your throat. you wonder if this is how all love stories end: quiet and dull, a posthumous mantelpiece left in your resting place. or maybe it is just the ones that feature you, whom your muses are more than ready to erase, silence you to the background.
“it’s alright.” with the last of your energy, most of it sapped off by the steam and fifty-degree solitude, you force a smile. “the shameful things come faster than the things you mean to say. just take your time to gather your thoughts. i’m always a knock away.”
she nods, with a little scruple written in her face, the crinkles under her eyes —
and turns to leave.
“wait.”
the sudden surge in volume of your voice makes the both of you jump. a chill shoots up your spine, an unholy matrimony of regret and recklessness. you wish you never raised your voice so instinctively, the way your screams sound just like your mother’s.
you fall silent. no words emerge from the tip of your tongue. anything that attempts to solidify melts into saltwater below. you start to wrack at your brain for something to say, something to blurt out. anything for her to
stay there, for just one more second. two. three. as long as she needs to capture you in her mind.
“i wasn’t lying,” you begin shakily.
pomni’s eyebrows twist themselves into a knot. “about what?”
the heat of the water laps at your breasts, and the walls of your throat start to shrink inwards. swallowing, you draw your lips back. look inside your heart.
the next time you open your mouth, you feel polaroid flashes going off from within your lungs.
“please look for me if you need to. choose me. speak to me. lean on me. let me be of use to you.”
the inside of your mouth is turning dry. “i know the way i do things is different from you. i know i sound like a liar. but you were the first person in the circus to truly look at me and tell me the way i felt mattered in some way to you. i’m not going to forget that.”
you feel a change stirring within you, like a gear once buried in age and rust is starting to spin on some newfound passion. your heart feels light, every exhale feels like an elegy for your fears.
“please,” you repeat, “please, look for me. i will always be watching out for you.”
her gaze softens, like shaved ice on a sidewalk in june. you wonder if your words have finally reached her — whether that piece of your heart you spooned into a bottle, carried and traversed across the lakes, made its way to her hands. whether she can read your handwriting, or if the ink will corrode her bones.
but like most birthday wishes, and most starless nights, nothing ever really works out in your favour. peremptorily, her eyes drop towards the ground, and she grins weakly. utters a small “thank you” before turning around and shuffling out the front door.
the isolation creeps in like blood from reopened scars, drawn and scribbled on by pens after pens of gold ink. it pools around your head in a halo, its lavender scent invading your airways and finding a home in the memories you unearthed with a grudge — and just as you did it for the chase, they did it because it is simply in its nature to do so.
your mother’s voice, a shrill echo from above as you plunge back into the water. at this point it is a tattoo on the furthest vein from the frontal lobe, in the shape of shackles; to remind you that you will never be free from what you are made of. something broken, something borrowed, and everything that happens afterwards is simply a butterfly effect.
the water comforts you, its currents whispering lies in your ears. you are loved, you are loved, you are loved. as you hold your breath, there is never a need to return their words; the waves are all-seeing, all-hearing, all-changing. your fears transform into visions, the last of your love that leaves you as it pulls your consciousness beneath surface, the dream that knocks you asleep. and becoming a smaller, more fragile version of yourself isn’t so frightening anymore; when you believe you can go to a place where you will never meet anybody who could break your heart in two. because to be forever unseen has always been a more desirable fate than being known and then not known at all.
you are about to shut your eyes when a pair of small, weak hands burst through the water and pull you upwards by the waist.