to push and scream // and then relief {to ah: a love letter}

[sadniss everdeen]

give your heart and soul to me
and life will always be
la vie en rose

You get too close, too fast.

You've spent so long with Anise, just Anise, that you forget. There are people not like her, people like you, people with spirits on their shoulders and under their skin. People who can't do anything else but listen.

You understand. You were her once, too.

(The day Anise fell into your lap, something changed.)

Your swing is wide and you overstep but you see that gleam from the corner of your eye; you'd stared death down the razor-fine edge of a butcher knife too many times not to recognize it. It rises and you turn and they're both screaming in the space between brain and bone but you're too slow, too forgetful that girls with eyes like yours--

The spear punches through your throat and it's the shock of it that makes your knees buckle. A bright red fountain (you're on an island and there's blood in your mouth, it's there you can taste it now) arcs from just above your clavicle and sprays over the other girl's face; she must flinch or cry out - you don't know, you stopped being able to hear things a second ago - because there's a twist and a crunch from inside. You stagger away, one hand cupped over the blade so dark the blood that leaks from you looks black. It slicks your fingers and spills out from your open lips and when you cough, there's a wrongness inside you know won't go away.

There's a burn that goes deeper, goes through but then there's a hand on your arm and fingers on your neck and the heat that comes from them stops your bones from breaking apart. Anise lets you lean on her as she has on you for three days as she tries her best to stop the bleeding; it's her breathing that brings your hearing back to you, exploding through your head like cannons (and isn't that just practice? will you be able to hear your own?) and so unlike what you've grown used to, what you've fallen asleep to these past four nights. A summer storm to replace the peaceful ebb and flow of your favourite tide.

Anise's nails sink deep into your arm as you move forward. Everything spins around and around as the two of you are sent upside-down - you leave a crimson signature as you fly, signing your name in this gravity-robbed section of space before crashing down to earth again. There's a blizzard in your head that whites out your thoughts and you feel the bones in your neck grind against wax, another mouthful of blood wrenched from you like a sacrifice, an offering. A gift.

This is what I wanted, isn't it?

The scent of roses next to your face. Hands on your cheek, under your shoulder, against your leg. Anise's eyes are wild and wet and black when they find yours - she twisted her body between you and the floor when you fell and her breath is harsh against your ear. For a moment you lay there, drooling blood and saliva; your mind fetches a memory of not even ten minutes ago, your body tight against hers as she laughed.

"Come on, Gabby," a voice so soft you don't think she's ever used it on you, "we're almost there." Where there is, you don't know.

When you shift, your knee knocks into her makeshift brace. You blink slowly. "Anise, y-your leg."

"Not important," she says and suddenly you're standing again, lost the period of getting up in the darkening corners of your brain. Everything feels so far away, every step in one direction detached from your body. The blade bobs in your throat when you swallow and there's hot iron flowing down into your belly and spreading like a cancer.

The tick of time slipping through your fingers since you came back broken three years ago comes slower now. You can hear the silence looming just around the corner, how big and bold and consuming.

"I..." you gasp, spitting red onto the tile, "I want..."

You want to sit down. You want to rest.

And in a voice so quiet you aren't even sure if Anise can hear you: "I want t-to go to the water."

[shrimp]

anise

My head's held high when we walk down the line, honey
Arm-in-arm through the clear night sky

The mansion quakes and turns, assaulted by petals that brush against the windows, slip through the cracks and weave through the air. This swarm is white as it rushes past Anise's face, tickling her nose in a taunt as if this is something to laugh about (There's a reason they're white, after all). Gabby's full weight rests on her, lighter than Anise expected - but Gabby has never been anything Anise was able to predict in the first place.

Fingers reach up to a throat caked with liquid life, oozing and dripping as they walk. Step-by-step; the halls are empty and the noises fade away, save for the constant rolling of a muttation. Wasn't it fifteen no ten no five just minutes ago that they had crumpled on the floor as Gabby tumbled out and out and out of the door - had Anise really only prolonged her life for another few minutes?

The house shivers and tilts, and they're thrown forwards into a gravity field that sends them soaring down the hall, whipping around in a whirlwind as white blossoms dripping red whistle past and as hard as Anise can try to focus on the noises, the sensations attacking her skin, the only thing she can sense is Gabby's breath: faint, ragged, clogged with blood.

The wall fades into view and Anise rotates as quickly as she can, slamming into the ground with a ferocity that punches her in the stomach, sucks out her air and causes her muscles to s c r e a m (Breathe-- I can't). Gabby's saliva drips onto Anise's collarbone, mucus turned crimson and water turned black. She looks smaller than usual, with a pallor unbecoming of the girl who swam in the sun, whose fingers laced with her own as their lips intertwined.

Anise grimaces, slowly sitting up as she leans Gabby on her shoulder. "Come on, Gabby," she whispers, "we're almost there." Where that is, she doesn't know.

Eventually Gabby moves, arms trembling and her knees knocking into Anise's knee. Specters of pain dance up Anise's leg, greeting her brain with a smirk and a chuckle. A subtle reminder of who tightly wrapped her leg, who she let run into the abyss. Her face remains the same. Gabby blinks. "Anise, y-your leg."

Even in death, Gabby's priorities are skewed, tilted towards a girl with too many thoughts swirling in her head and not enough emotions to express them. ("I hate to break it to you, but there's a big chance one of us might be dead by the time you figure it out.")

"Not important."

Her hands reach down to her partner's as they make their way back up. This hallway is darker, the shadows stretching out to the holes in the panels, the picture frames filled with empty canvas. Unfinished. For an eternity they stand there, Anise holding on to Gabby's side, onto her arms, nerves burning the texture into memory. She watches and waits, time slipping away grain-by-grain. Gabby spits, the red splattering against the marble and onto Anise's shoe. She speaks, softly, hoarsely.

"I want t-to go to the water."

"Okay," Anise says, her voice soft as the petals given to her a half hour ago. She turns, and they walk towards the smell of chlorine, the sounds of waves lapping against sunburst tile. They fly into a wall but she rotates instead, landing both of them on their feet. Her left hand wraps around Gabby's waist, her right cradling a wrist. They march into the inevitable at a snail's pace.

When Anise pushes open the door, the air becomes heavier. She breathes once, twice, feels the air rush through her lungs and into her bloodstream, absorbing into her cells and her brainwaves. She turns towards Gabby, rids her mouth of the strands of blood.

"We're here."

[sadniss everdeen]

do you believe in an afterlife
where our souls will both collide
in some great elysium, way up in the sky

It's almost impossible to tell the salt of the water from the overwhelming taste of your own blood, but you do. You sag a little, your fingers hooked tight to Anise's chestplate, your steps unsteady as you cross from wood to tile. Your boots are crumbling from your feet like you are a statue stepped out of its mooring for the first time; a trail of glittering gold marks the march into the place you'll never leave.

She props you against the wall as your newly-found chestplate disengages again, shattering around you in purple plaster - the helmet you hadn't even put on flakes to pieces like the scales of a fish. Speckles of violet and crimson wax stick to the bandages over your left arm but you can't even feel that pain anymore. Your hand cups around your throat and half-heartedly tries to hold pressure, little rivulets streaming over your starched-white fingertips - a slow descent into the abyss instead of a free-fall all at once. The adrenaline junkie in you wonders which would be the better if you had the ability to come back to life one last time.

(Not that it would matter; you wouldn't want to come back if Anise had already left, not even the brush of your souls to grieve departure together. If you think about it too long maybe you're a little, stupidly and selfishly, glad it's you first. What's the point in living if the reason you're alive is gone?)

One of her throwing knives rips through the seams of your sweater. You raise your tired eyes to hers (so bright, so wet, so telling) as it slips from your arms. "T-taking initiative?" you ask, the chuckle in your throat gurgling a little bit. "I'm... proud."

And you are, you are, but that's just something else you'll never say.

She strips the fabric off and presses it against you, her hand over yours, careful not to tilt the speartip still lodged in the quick of your throat. It wavers when you swallow and the bones of your neck chip, a click of scissors snapping shut behind your teeth. The metal on your breath could make knives.

"Thanks, learned from the best."

The laugh pulled from you is louder this time, pain shooting behind one eye and blood spilling from your wound more forcefully despite her hand there. You don't even care about her mutter (idiot)as the two of you sway on your unsteady ground. Light spills in from the outside, the red of the storm erased by the shattered glass patterns splashed onto tile and water. Anise's face is framed in green, a deep emerald cut into the new facets of her face, your blood against her black.

She can't undo her brace but she shucks her helmet and her chestplate. You remember sitting ten feet away and pressing the crayon to her skin - there was a curiosity in you unable to be sated, a burn to know bones under the flesh. It was something you hadn't felt in three years and you relished each lick of the flame.

Around you, the whales swirl. Your narwhal passed too close to your neck and now dances crimson by your ear, his chirping sharp and tense and scared. Anise gets you to the stairs and then sitting; the first lap of water at your toes brings a wet, cracking sob up from the depth of you. Just one, just enough to know what you're trying so desperately to hold back - the pilot whale passes under your cheekbone and you swallow down the next cry that wants to escape. There's a clumsy splash in the water behind you and now there's Anise again, hands soft and words quiet, and you just... you're so--

"I had a dream, l-last night. That I took... you to the ocean."

The water swells to under your arms. You lean back against Anise's strong shoulder and sigh, the sound bubbling from you like from underwater. "I guess this is close enough."

For a moment, the ripples you cause lap the walls. It creates a false tide, in tune to her breathing under your ear, the same pulse as the stream that flows from your throat. The two of you twined into one sound.

The petals churn outside the window. You can still smell them on her skin, caught in the storm not even a half hour ago. Your arms are stone but you still pluck the rose from your hair and twist it into hers, a smile capped with a sigh that's too mournful for your own liking. "D-damn it, Anise..." you mutter, your hand on her cheek leaving red imprints, "I came h-here to die... and n-now I don't... wanna leave."

She presses soothing circles into your hands with her thumbs; the two of you sway back and forth, suspended in this place temporarily between realities. Light turns from red to gold as she passes through portraits in the water. Her hands are warm against yours, and you lace one together, press it against your chest. Your heart drums hard under her palm but she stops it from beating through your ribs entirely - her fingers brush the necklace you always wear and it clinks, rolling to the side like caught in the surf.

"I have... a present f-for you." You pull it off your neck with a snap, weaving the leather thread between her fingers. Your grin is leaky and lopsided, but genuine. "Consider it a...souvenir." Quieter. "A thank you."

[shrimp]

anise

The water embraces, nips at their cuts and scrubs at their skin. In another time, in another life, Anise might have tried jumping in, given it another go. But she was never that naive; second-chances don't exist.

For a moment there's silence as the waves they've made ripple and subside. The whales begin cheeping: the beluga nuzzles Gabby's cheek, careful to keep away from the red that trickles down her neck, spreading out in the water like strands of silk.

"I had a dream, l-last night. That I took... you to the ocean."
"I guess this is close enough."

Outside the storm still brews, and the house responds in turn, twisting and turning, hesitation in every twitch. The water sloshes the tiniest amount, making soft splashes on the tiles. The stained glass is tinted with blush, the air a strange combination of salt and sweet. Gabby entwines the rose in Anise's hair, scarlet-red against black as she sighs. A petal dislodges, dances on Anise's ear before sticking to her cheek. Gabby's hand is there next, and when she removes it the only reason Anise can tell that it's blood is the smell; iron and sharp, battling with rose.

"D-damn it, Anise... I came h-here to die... and n-now I don't... wanna leave."

Anise doesn't say - can't say, really, anything. Something's caught in her throat and she doesn't quite know what. So she takes Gabby's hand, makes circles in the palm, the thumb, each finger as she trails along Gabby's lifeline. Their fingers interlace, and Anise hopes that this says more than words could; she was never a conversationalist. She can feel Gabby's heartbeat, a drumline march to the ends of time and back again. Hands graze against a necklace, and Gabby pulls it away, wrapping it around Anise's hands. A grin. "Consider it a...souvenir." Quieter. "A thank you."

She rotates her wrist, looking at the shell, weathered after months in the sands, years in the waters. This skeleton's traveled to more places than either of them will ever see. Slowly, Anise wraps it around her neck, tying a knot at the seams. Her right hand reaches down into her coat pocket, rummaging for her own token. She pulls it out - it's nothing special; a stone, swiped from the garden before the Reaping. It wasn't much, but it was home.

"Here," she says, closing Gabby's hand around the stone. "Keeps you grounded."

A faint noise overhead distracts her, and she glances up to see a parachute floating down from the ceiling, the roof having unfurled for a moment to the hurricane (could one call a storm of roses a hurricane? Or a lover's quarrel?). Petals drift downwards, embraced in a waltz and landing delicately on the water's edge. Anise lifts her hand up, palm outstretched as the item lands true. Quietly she opens the package and pulls out a deck of crayons - grays of all hues, and a scarlet-red.

Beneath her, Gabby stirs. Her eyes take a moment to focus, but she recognizes the capsule almost immediately. "Gimme," she mumbles, tilting her head over to look Anise in the eye. "D-don't be greedy. They t-aught you... how to s-share... in that fancy dojo... right?"

Anise smirks. taking a crayon out of the box. Its muted gray has depths of the ocean nestled within it. "What do you want to draw, Gabby Bellamonte?"

"It's a surprise," she says, clamping it in the divot of her thumb to stop it from trembling. "Y-you're patient. More... t-than me." She coughs, red coating the paper around the wax. "E-even this is... taking t-too long for me."

Gabby Bellamonte may be stubborn, but her heart is even more so. Anise turns, exposing the left side of her arm as a canvas. She takes Gabby's hand, guiding it, lacing over Anise's wrist. The touch is cold and wet, but firm; her thumb joins their pulses together. "Tell me a story," Gabby mumbles as she puts wax to skin.

Anise Himura was never a story-teller. To her, actions spoke louder than words ever could, and the only thing she had to do to communicate was flash her sabre and attack, or run straight to the point without flowery dialogue. No one ever taught her the eloquence of prose, how to weave a world out of syllables and dipthongs, a simile that stretched from one side of her mouth to the other. But in the presence of a dying girl, she supposes that any words, any worlds, could do.

As Anise speaks, their hands move as one. Her tale is of Two. not of the mountains that spiral towards the sky or of the sounds of machinery whirring away at the center of the earth. Not of the hordes of white uniforms that go marching past, or stop to chat at the butcher's shop or the cafe with too-bitter coffee.

She speaks of the night, when the center is closed and her father has walked home; she notes each eye in the floorboards and the feeling of rough mats pressed against her feet. She describes the moonlight, filtering in through the windows and leaving squares on the floor, how her feet never stepped halfway into the light - rather, all or nothing.

She speaks of the night, where the front door creaks open to snores and the soft sounds of her father scribbling in his study. Of the gruel that boils on the stove, the smells of rice and boar and egg wafting through her nose. Of the clay bowls, passed down from her grandmother and her grandmother before her. Of the barley tea with steam that floats upwards like Gabby's blood sinks to the depths of the pool.

She speaks of the night, of the subtle shadows in the garden, the peonies and the hydrangeas that curl up the walls and the pot of dandelions that sits on her windowsill (her mother gave it to her when she turned twelve, three weeks too late; she keeps planting them when the next year turns over). Of the cicadas that squabble in the trees. Of the sunrise that lets her see off into the horizon but not an inch farther.

When she turns back, her story's been etched on her arm, created by two. Anise turns, eyes taking in each detail, each scribble of wax on skin.

"Not bad," she remarks, Thank you.

[sadniss everdeen]

free from our shackles our chains; our mouths, and our brains
we will open all the gates and we will walk careless
straight into the light

"What do you want to draw, Gabby Bellamonte?"

So many things. These cotton-candy clouds and the azure horizon. The orchard at night, spilling its light vibrant across Anise's damp eyes. How the Salt Flats burned before dark, turning the sands pink and orange and red; a sunset of brutality. You, you want to say, always you.

(Was it just last night that she slept beside you and you saw her for what felt like the first time? An hour ago the storm in you raged, sweeping everything aside, her hair through your fingers soft as rain. You touched the underneath of her jaw and a hurricane bloomed between your skin. She was so... peaceful. The eye of it all.)

But you don't, because you're leaving soon and she doesn't need this weight tied to her ankles. Not when she'll already be carrying parts of you on her arm and in her bones, on your shoulders as you've carried the dead. So you say it's a surprise instead, take comfort in the presence behind and the canvas in front, and put wax to flesh. Anise Himura is not one for words - you've learned to read a glance and a smile, the invisible comfort she gives as she gathers you close to her chest - but for you she speaks volumes. Your crayon travels almost mindlessly as she details the place she grew up, the heart of the home you so wanted to know. The flowers in the garden all look the same steel-blue, but wherever your fingers touch they blush red into bloom. A slivered moon watches overhead where the muscle that clenches her fist sits - unfurling it ripples its light across her skin.

"Not bad," she says, her words so loaded they sink in the water beside her, and that's why you don't mind dying with things unsaid. Your head cradled in the crook of her neck says more than you ever would, the low rumble of her chest against your side.

You smile. "I'm n-not done."

The ocean caps over her elbow, wild and loose, flowing past the moon. A piece of you joined to what used to be hers; a colliding of worlds that exists only in this reality between. When it comes to life it seethes like the sea you're used to, writhing to the surface to solidify. Your touch trails over your handiwork - a conversation and confession alike trapped in each stroke of wax. "I forgive you... if you... b-break it." The hand that was a shackle at her wrist turns into a glove, slipping over her fingers and lacing into the space between. Her palm nestles on your sternum where your heart is trying to riot, hammering ever harder in hopes of breaking free. "It means i-it did its j-job."

Salt tickles your nose as you close your eyes. You sigh into Anise's collar - you're so pale against her, almost transparent. In the reflection of the water, your veins are winding rivers under your skin, bruised purple and deep. The echo of your heart in your ears is making you dizzy, so fast and so strong and so scared; your words may mask the fear but your body can't lie. Anise must feel it, the two of you adrift in a growing pool of red turned blinding white by the glass above. You wonder how long it's going to be until the cannon booms, if the girl who killed you will know it was yours.

There's no place for a soul in her eyes, too little room to take root. Anise's gaze is dark and damp and open, empty but full all at once; a perfect place to rest.

"I'm p-probably going... to haunt y-you," you murmur, the settled blood in the back of your throat almost making you choke. "I'm s-sorry."

(But you aren't, not really. It's more comforting than the abyss you feel chewing at the back of your head, the white noise lingering in the curl of your ears. It tints the darkness pink and makes all the difference.)

"Think o-of it as... me k-keeping you... c-company."

Five days. Here, almost a week is almost a lifetime - you try to think of sleeping in the orchard alone and swallow the pain that doesn't come from the knife. Despite it all, the exhaustion and the fear and the anger, you'd do it all again in a heartbeat. (Though this time around, you'd spend more time on the roof with a girl who looked like she could cut you to pieces - and she would, just not ever in the way you'd expect.)

The rhythm of blood in your lungs joins the whispers of waves against the tile. They sing when you breathe in, a musical murmur in the deepest depths of you. Anise's heartbeat thrums under your ear and together they make an orchestra of flesh and sinew.

Five days ago you never thought you'd be back like this, but maybe this was the way you wanted it. Come full circle. Blood leaks out of your lips when you smile.

"W-we did good... you and me." You didn't know how blessed you'd be, given a siren's song to swim off into the deep.

[shrimp]

anise

She told her father that fear was a useless emotion; it curls up the legs, twists around the torso, constricts the mind and body. Once it takes root it grows and grows until you have half the mind to pluck it from your nailbeds, burn the leaves and toss them aside. Her father simply smiled, and tossed her the wooden sword to resume their training.

If he could only see her now; and perhaps he could, watching with a cup of tea cooling on the kitchen table. He, who could read her like a book when no one else could, would know at that moment just how frightened Anise Himura really was. But perhaps frightened isn't the correct word, she's never cared for this type of semantic and it shows when she responds with yes and no, commands and sharp glares. While her swordplay is first class, her emotional range was always lacking nuance.

No, she's not frightened. This is a different word, as she watches Gabby curl the crayon around her elbow, drawing wild waves that engulf the moon and flood the dandelions. A tapestry that coats her arm, where mountaintops meet the sea and girls with golden eyes get to live lifetimes in the sands. Anise twists her arm, staring at the creation as it begins to shift and mold, wax combining and solidifying. No matter what it is, it's beautiful.

It's the fleeting thoughts that pierce her brain, of paths that should have been taken, could have been taken; had she turned right instead of left, walked through one door instead of two, paused for a minute longer in an intersection. Anise traces fingertips, memorizing divots and grooves, hair brushing against her chin.

It's counting the heartbeats that slowly increase, raspier breaths and the occasional cough of blood. The subtle trembles in her arm, the way those eyes take in the lights that dance, hungry and infinite. The pit in Anise's stomach that burrows deeper and deeper after every passing second.

When Gabby speaks, it's not news. Anise has already known that the girl from four will be haunting her until she draws her last breath. Whether that be a specter or a nightmare - does that truly matter? In turn she rakes fingers through hair, soft words echoing through the chamber. "You have nothing to apologize for." In fact, Anise is almost relieved. It will be nice to know that somewhere, you still exist. Even if that's just in my head. Anise watches the ripples weaken and flatten, the water around them turning mauve and indigo, starlight and strawberry. Some petals have sunk to the bottom of the pool, swirling together in clumps at the bottom.

"W-we did good... you and me," Gabby says.

Anise feels fingers against her own, how they interlock like a puzzle piece. She wonders whether they would have been better off having never met; Anise on her own, as planned. Perhaps Gabby would have survived a few more days, hours, minutes, seconds. She doesn't fool herself into thinking either of them would have won. But fate had other plans, and there's no going back; the train is approaching, it's a one-way ride. Part of her thinks that Gabby should have had someone to climb aboard with her.

"Thank you for carrying me."

Gabby's laugh sounds ripped straight from her chest. "Moron," she sighs, "t-the second you... fell in-into m-my lap... I wasn't... leaving you... b-behind."

She takes a moment to compose herself by kissing Gabby on the forehead, her eyes too far above Gabby's eyeline for the dying girl to notice them clenched shut. Her muscles scream, her stomach twists. Everything here is wrong. For a girl who came here to die, Gabrielle Bellamonte is too alive to be silenced now. Where Anise is the moon Gabrielle is a sun: blazing and powerful, nurturing and blistering, a hypocrisy of attributes that signify the opposite of translucent skin, limbs that shake and a heart that runs a marathon just to keep afloat.

And when Anise pulls away, the expression on Gabby's face is almost too much. For once, she says nothing. She doesn't have to. Breathe in, breathe out.

"Don't look at me like that or else I'll start crying."

They laugh, because what else can do they do in the face of Death itself? A rattle and a soft chuckle that bounces off the walls and ricochets against the rafters. Heaving and rasping against the current as it takes them in, some earlier than others. Gabby closes her eyes, grows quiet amid the whispers of the room. The train is running early. Anise wipes at her eye.

The first time she witnessed a death, she was eight. Family clustered around a bed, a hand reaching for her as she cowered behind a leg. A stern instruction as she grasped the hand, clammy and speckled, with hands too small and a frown too wide. Paralysis climbing up her legs, embracing her torso. She vowed never to let that happen again. Yet what do you say to a girl who lets you in when all paths lead to black? What do you say to a girl who took your heart, cold and rusted, and warmed it up in the palm of her hand?

She was never good at conversation. But she won't let her go into the dark alone, afraid, reaching a hand out to a girl who's too scared to take it. More circles in her palm, massaging seconds into a lifespan. Outside the winds howl and the rosebuds quake. The house trembles, afraid of life itself.

A gentle shake, a quiet murmur.
"Save a seat for me, please. I'll be right behind you."

[sadniss everdeen]

Gabrielle Bellamonte

we had a promise made
we were in love

Her lips leave static where they linger. It's no wonder you gravitated so close together with a charge like that between you, one that arced each time you touched. Somewhere, some selfish part of you hopes she doesn't find something so electrifying again. 

(But whose to say that once she falls asleep, her skin won't light up as she dreams about where your hands used to be?)

Can't have you crying, you want to say, not my strong, stoic career, but laughing rips the breath straight from your chest with no way to get it back. Your body makes you hunger for it, each gasp deeper than the last without any chance of satisfying you. Where your mouth rests Anise's skin is starting to glisten red like the petals come in to take shelter from the storm.

It's colder now. The fist curled around her token is frozen shut, the other claws in the spaces between her fingers. There's a mist inside you that slowly spreads its wings, blanketing your thoughts in a grey fog. This embrace is something you'd always found in a needle - easily taken, but easily washed away.

(You never wanted anything that lasted.

There's a boy here who has spent years in the darkness. He wears the clothes he drowned in and the contempt he brought with him. Your shoulders have worn his bootprints since he filled them with stones and sunk in the ocean, but you've gotten so tired of treading water for the both of you.

Then you did, and now you're dead.

His words don't hurt anymore. His form swirls like smoke, like one strong wind could take it away; seven years of torment manifest and all you want to do is hold his hand.

Maybe it was worth dying for.

I hope so, chère, and then the boy is gone, swept from your thoughts and shaved from your bones. In his place is an almost unberable weightlessness.)

Anise shakes you free from the fog. "Save a seat for me, please. I'll be right behind you." Her words are quiet, tender in a way that rouses the slowly-sleeping parts of you. You take too long to focus on her face, the light streaming through her hair and falling into your dilated eyes. She could dip her smallest finger in them if she wanted, scoop out the abyss and replace it with the moon you'll never get to see again.

"D-don't... worry,", you rasp, "I'd--"

Your lungs cramp in your chest; the knife bobs and twists when you cough, misting red under Anise's jaw. Blood leaks forcefully through her fingers clamped over your neck, pressing your weeping flesh back together like it would make any difference at all. The feeling of falling settles in your head and won't go away no matter how still she holds you.

"I'd... wait f-forever..." another cough, blood frothing up behind your teeth this time instead of seeping through, "if y-you... asked... me t-to."

And maybe the guilt slips into your words despite yourself, an offer to make up for breaking your promise. You said you wouldn't leave her behind but here you are, pulling up your moorings and unraveling your roots, disengaging from this shell that housed you for so long. 

If you could, you'd sink the both of you to the bottom together. You'd share the same water in your lungs just like you shared the same breath, once.

"Can I... g-get another... kiss before I-I go?" You told yourself you wouldn't cry but it's so exhausting to fight a body that doesn't listen; water wells in your eyes and rolls across the bridge of your nose, disappearing into your hairline. Easier to miss, but Anise never misses anything. "I want... t-to keep it... with me."

The last kiss Anise will ever give you is soft and quiet; lingering. You manage to tilt your face up until you're trading iron between you, but there's salt too thin to be red and you're not sure who's crying anymore. It tastes bittersweet, missed chances and stolen glances, and mixed with your blood you swallow a lifetime you'll never get to know. "I g-get to die... in the water... a-and in the a-arms... of a p-pretty girl?" Anise's mouth is speckled with roses, your signature until the water washes it away. "W-what did I d-do... to deserve this?"

(There's a girl here who spent her life in the light. It's hard to see through the shadow but you do, and in this twilight you see blond hair and bright eyes and a smile you haven't ever forgotten. Qilena wears a sundress you haven't seen before and the red lipstick that left tattoos on your neck.

Are you happy? she asks, a strange thing to say at the end of the world, but there's a sun spilling into your chest from some distant horizon and somehow you understand. You take her hands like you did when she died, lacing them over and over. You wonder if her body has been eaten away by the earth or if it's still frozen in your phantom embrace.

Yes, and she nods like she's been expecting it (and maybe she has). Three years of your chest being too full but now it's empty without her.

Thank you for saving me, you tell her, her reply ripped away by the winds that carry her to the sky.)

You open your eyes again knowing that it will be the last time. Red runs in rivulets like counting minutes, each slipping down your skin and into the water. The countdown started on an island a thousand miles from here has reached its last handful of moments, crumbling in your grasp no matter how gentle you try and hold them. 

"Anise, I..." (don't want to go / i'm sorry / think you were the best thing that could have happened to me) "for w-what it's w-worth... I-I'm glad... it was y-you."

She blinks twice, then a third time; you remember the orchard, the film caught over her eyes like a shield. "I'm glad it was you, too." Her mouth trembles - if you hadn't spent days with your hands wrapped around her frame, nights with breaths intermingled, you would have sworn it was the trick of the light.

Oh, mon amour.

There's a humming you hear, in the distance. It washes over you like the tide at night, rushing calm and close to swallow. You lay in the same place your family died and let the light swirl together until you can't tell colours from tile, glass from flesh, your tears from the water. Ever so slowly the edges of the pool fade away at the same time that you lose Anise's heartbeat.

Even so, you refuse to close your eyes, unwilling to look away even for a second as her features blur and shift like a watercolour painting that bled too deeply. A beam of light bounces just perfectly and above you, Anise is as blue blue blue as the wave that takes your thoughts away.

Without the shell to hold it down, your ghost is easy to lift.  Your soul leaks slow out of your open lips, drapes itself around her shoulders; you've stopped breathing but can still smell roses.

Your lips turn up just a little.

Who woulda thought I'd fall in love?



(you met a girl,
             once.                                   you fell through the earth
                                               with her and, you think,
                                                                maybe
                                                              she brought you back

                                      to life.                                          )