( Happily Ever After )
What sort of relationship could we have when you've only ever offered me nothing?
When we were small, we stood out on the pearly ledges in the cold air, Grecian white pillars all around us and the close sky a breadbasket of touchable, kissable stars that I could snatch from the air like fat red apples from a tree and make a burning white wreath for my head. You stood nearest to the edge and, dazzled, I told you, it is so beautiful up here. The world seems so very close to us.
Fingertips extended, hands outstretched. Take my hand, Ryuhou. Let's dance beneath the stars.
You said to me, if you ever receive an invitation to come to my house, don't come. I might hurt you by mistake. You looked sad and hard and bitter, your breath cold with the burning of stars. "I can only hurt you."
When we were not so small, I found you in your mother's garden, every flower like the blossoming of my new breasts, and I saw that you were weeping. I knew that it was because I had to leave.
I'll never see you again, you said. Just go. Get away from me.
I could feel through your chest, the shirt collar and the milk white tremor of your skin your fluttering heartbeat, its every quiver mourning. You swiped at your eyes furiously until they were red and there were red marks on your face. I'll come back soon, I said, softly to you. I'll come back for you some day. It will be just like a fairy tale, you'll see. I love you.
You looked up at me as if I were a savior. You were shining with the light that was ours, your hope was everything in me. You plucked a flower from the ground and pressed it, root and all and cracking petals, into my sweaty palm and I curled my fingers tight around it. I didn't care about the earth and soil. You said, promise me that after this you'll never leave me. Promise me you'll never love somebody else no matter where you go. Promise me.
I kissed you softy, sadly on the mouth, whispered, "I promise."
Now that we are grown, I see us drifting apart like fault lines, like different worlds. You are sliding away from me. Still, I always waited for you. Even when adolescence was a thick clot in my veins, the warmth of womanhood seeming impossible to bear, and though my father suggested I marry into high society at a young age and I was met with not a few sweet proposals, I refused. I refused myself and every other man that came my way, thinking only of you. And I did return for you, loving you. It is not I who has broken her promise.
In a memory so very far away, I said that it would be just like a fairytale.
I was wrong.
/end