Playing House
Slick pink lips and sculpted brown hair-- the professor would think I haven't changed a bit. I tell him I'm grown up now. I marvel that he looks exactly the same. He doesn't have anything to say to me, though, and if I didn't know better I'd think he didn't hear me.
These days it seems I'm the one wearing the glasses. Nonetheless, my sight hasn't improved. When I said I'd grown up and away from this place, I lied.
It's not as lonely as you think, living here. In the mirror my brother prowls the floors in his robe and asks me for just one more injection. I think he realized that they were slowly killing him. I think that's why he liked them.
Mamiya has mastered the art of being neither alive nor dead for quite some time now. His bedroom door is still half-open so I can hear if he calls for me in the night. His clinically clean scent mixed with that of a little boy still hovers around-- eucalyptus oil, warm milk, green tea, soil and blood from those pesky thorns of his.
For me, it's just the same as if he still were here. The medicine cabinet is full of dusty pill bottles sharing space with my glossy, new tubes of makeup. And Nemuro might as well still have been dropping by for visits-- his seat by me on the couch is occupied by a ghost in a tailored purple jacket and I never dare try and oust him; instead I catch myself pouring tea for two, slick slimy rose petals brushing against my waxy lips as I swallow.
I still make sugar candy out of Mamiya's roses. He's not here to tend them. He hasn't been here for ten years, so they've taken over the greenhouse. The white metal wicker-patterned table and chairs were swallowed up in vines a long time ago. I think the black roses mourn him. They're the only ones who believe he's left.