holding
on to a memory
Disclaim:
e.e' I don't own Mimori&Ryuhou blahblahblah. Kthnx.
And
now on with the longdrabble.
xxx
Your
face is all that hasn't changed
You're
reassembled just like me
But
when I reach to touch your hand
You
stroke mine gently.
-
The Stars
There was a ghost of a memory floating on the outskirts of her head, so close to her that she could snatch it from the air and hold it pressed between her fingers. But the thing about loss is that you never recover or you completely do. And the thing about never being able to recover from a loss is that the memories become elusive things that hurt you. Blurry things with patchwork wings that move like trails of starlight on a dark canvas, bending and fading at the corners like old photographs. Distorted things. She smiled to herself, tracing the lines of her distortion with her fingertips. The pendant rose with every breath and glowed against the stark white of her skin.
And she remembered.
Mimori. White petal blossoms in her hair and the curve of a half-moon smile on her lips. And her smell, too, breathing off of every pore, like expensive, elegant perfumes and the crisp night-lilies that grew up along the boardwalk in the Spring.
Underneath her dress -- pastel pink like a bridesmaid's dress -- her adolescent breasts were bare. Little rosebuds, soft and blooming. She was waiting for the shy, sensitive boy to come back.
When he did, he moved behind her, quietly, across the lawn, reaching down to hand her a glass of wine. She turned to look at him with her too-big brown eyes and smiled sweetly. She asked him if it was okay, and he nodded, sitting beside her, with her small, thin body like a bed of flowers bathed in moonglow. Her cheeks on fire, she placed her fingers gently over his. He did not ask her to let go.
Now her hands are cold and delicate inside her fur-lined gloves, and he is sleeping far away from her where he never remembers past his grief. She pretends not to notice that the fire in his eyes only burns for another; that it never burned for her. She pretends not to remember when a shy, sensitive boy in a small tux with garnet eyes handed her her first glass of wine and smiled that way, making her feel so safe in a world full of adults and a child's uncertainty. She'd known, then, that she had loved him -- even known that she always would. But she pretends she didn't know. And she pretends that the past really is something that can be let go over time.
But Mimori has never been good at pretending.
/finale.