Condolences
During lovemaking Shiori did not have her everyday claws. She nudged her body into my touch like a cat longing to be petted. So eager, my little one was; so desperate to gratify. She was awkward but eager, and I liked her head tucked in the crook of my chin. Holding her hand was like holding a baby bird-- you could feel the fragility, the shivering individual bones.
Why do I
tell you this? I don't see her any more. I don't even remember what she looked
like.
But together we were dangerous.
When she was with me she felt like all the feeble factions of her body-- the strained smile, throat thick with tears, scraped knees-- were healed and toughened. I could make a little girl like her into a princess. I blunted and dulled the stings of things that sought to harm her. I picked her up and put my love on wheels so that she never tripped and fell.
We were smirking where we had been silent. We were perilously proud of being two. Together we were the angry, vivid color of a new bruise appearing suddenly on your skin; and you couldn't and wouldn't say anything to us. Words bounced off our hardened exoskeletons that we built off each other's skin.
But swords didn't.
On her side of a locked dorm door, Shiori's face is turning scarlet from the crooning dirge her howling has tempered into. Alone she is a burgundy blood bruise rising up on her own tired flesh as penance for my arrogance and her foolishness, in taking up the wager that is falling in love. We both miscalculated. We both lost something.
Too, alone I am meek like a lamb; holding my tongue, dumb, faded into the background. They tell everyone to mourn me now that I'm departed. I'm not the one to mourn for.
Someone else has already erased my voice greeting on my phone, and soon it will be disconnected. She'll meet with a tiny automated message when she calls.