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The wave came and stayed like persistent landlord wearing out your name at the door. I’m not home, sorry. I’m not home. I’m not home. It came and settled at knee height, an almost-indigo that glittered when the sun hit it. Every morning the sun touched the walls of the kitchen, shone through the window glass and reflected our new, endless ocean grappling at strangers calves, but never dampening their clothes.
The ceiling was blue, most days.
It was possession of a kind.
Most days we pan up, and above us there is a sky so unremarkable and unintentional in creations eye that it really is just another sky, and it really is just another day. There is wind that rustles the trees. Dogs that bark. Young girls who cross streets and fight to keep their skirts from blowing up. There are crows which line the powerlines and never stray too far from each other, but fight to hide their prey from one another.
Most days, there is a train.
This train passes by and this train is unlike any other train. It’s the fastest train there is in the city and it doesn’t make any stops. It’s black and red and silver but also green, and when it passes you by you better have a hold of your feet—it’s that fast. No one leaves Tokyo, not anymore, so who could be on it? Who’s even bothering? When the windows pass you by, all you see are seats; so who’s driving? The train never goes backwards like most trains do, so where does it go after it passes you?
This is the possession. This is it settling in.
I look down at my arms and expect the flesh to part where it’s been parted before. Long, thin slits that grow suddenly wide and red—eyes unto my muscle and sinew. There’s an irritation inside I can’t quell; an allergic reaction in my nervous system. There’s this desperation to find the razor wire coiled around my bones, around the wet hollow of my throat, which reminds of who I am not, of what tomorrow is not, of what the world can never be. It tightens and tightens but makes sure I can still breathe.
Tomorrow’s another day and the world is my oyster—so long as I never want to leave Tokyo.
This repetition, it’s dangerous religion. Overhead and underfoot we are viewed and he has chosen the path most adorned with spider lilies and towering foxglove. Everybody talks the same here but no two people walk alike, like the world has been wired the wrong way, like it’s plausible enough that one day it just rained so much that we got an ocean.
Dirt doesn’t cling to anyone’s shoes and the sun doesn’t cast any shadow. The woman at the convenience store expects me every day at 5 o’clock and I do not disappoint. Things have been torn apart.
Warm champagne sweats in the bathroom aside a drying tub. I could see the tiles from where we’d left the door open; vertical and certain, they climb on and on like ivy into the ceiling. It felt like they could have climbed on forever when I settled my head against Ren’s stomach, the sweet-smelling water clogging my ears and pruning my fingertips.
I lay under him now, damp on clean sheets, feet slipping on the lowest parts of his back. I know what’s real and I know what’s fake. I know what’s real and I know what’s fake and I want him to fuck me with the windows open, so I might close my eyes and imagine it’s the sea taking me apart, bit by crumbling bit—
Erosion. That’s what this is. Him and me and our floor of dense sea, and the eyes above and below during our 6 AM greetings and our 5:30 dinners and our 6:45 baths and everything that comes after.
This is permanence. And this is things being torn apart.