Articulation
x
The air is coarse and harsh on her skin. She stands still in the cemetery where graves stand stick straight like hands pointing to God. Her hair rushes out of her ponytail, clings to the perspiration on her face. Janine holds onto a bundle of flowers, blinking an almost unnoticeable gleam from her eyes. She doesn't remember crying about anything (father always says it's a sign of weakness, to show emotion) but she guesses that this is a good thing to cry about.
The sun shines brightly, like a sadist viewing her displeasure, and she lays the flowers down, the white of the lilies blinding against the dark soil. She backs away, her shirt clinging to her skin from the heat, throat tightening as she rushes home.
She doesn't understand why she's in such a hurry because, after all, no one will be there to greet her.
x
Janine sits in the gym, alone, and her heart pounds, pounds faster than ever before, the memory of a girl arriving just moments ago and defeating her still fresh in her mind. She thinks about the way her face stayed in a perfect determination, her body stuck in a formation of the words she did not say, (I can win this. I can win this. I can win this.) fingers splayed against her first pokéball, the only one she had to use.
Janine bites her lip, wonders why she wasn't strong enough to defeat that girl. Ponders, unabashedly, She looked to be about ten, how could I lose? How could I let myself be defeated?
It feels surreal to lose. Janine always, always, wins. Her father taught her how to, told her what to do in certain situations in battles, but he never told her how to handle a loss.
She sees his face – her body still, frozen, in the middle of the darkening gym – and his disappointment is vivid. It makes her want to cry.
x
He never visits. He never calls.
Janine hasn't spoken to her father in over a year.
It makes her think that sometimes, silence isn't quite so silent.
x
Janine finds herself in the graveyard fifteen years later. Her hair is turning gray, but everything else is the same. It's comforting, somewhat, unnerving too.
She tiptoes towards her mother's gravesite, two lilies in hand. Even now, in the dead of winter, she misses her, wants to honor her memory. She lays one lily on her grave.
Then she turns towards the grave beside her mother's and kneels. Her father lies underneath, his name on the tombstone.
Janine's eyes do not prick with tears. Janine's heart does not break. Janine's hands do not shake as she drops the last lily on the ground.
Because, after all, it's too late.