water lilies bloom in august
water lilies bloom in august
1,633w; pg-13 (myungsoo/suzy)
and at the end of it all, they looked to the sky.
Some say life is a cycle. Birth, life, death, all interconnected by some wayward string of fate. This string cannot be cut, they reason. These are the people who have a general knack for understanding life as it comes and goes.
These are the people who, unlike others, do not have the capacity to destroy themselves.
She is born in the midst of two springs, rooted in the damp soil of an empty household, emerging through the frothy wake of the water as a derelict child. The world is a scary place, she learns young. Scary and dark.
She wears bright fuchsia to cut through the black.
The country is a soft, rolling carpet of grass. Two shades forest green, one shade lemon yellow. The sun peels across the horizon, into his eyes that cannot take outside.
He has not locked his gaze with the sun for two years. Car exhaust billows from the automobile, ruining their reunion.
On rainy days, she will stand outside. It isn’t her intention to become drenched, she realizes. She just stands outside when the rain begins to drizzle, tickles of drops on her skin, and forgets to go inside once it starts pelting.
Her mother chastises her. How can you forget? Watches the sopping trail her daughter leaves on the blue carpet. Doesn’t move to clean it up. How can you ignore the rain?
She bites her tongue. I don’t. I don’t. Her eyes wander to the ceiling, rain slapping the roof tiles, and wonders if anyone is watching the rain like this, like her.
His aunt tells him stories that he won’t listen to. “You were born good,” she reminisces. “A good child, holding nails for your uncle when he fixed the fence.”
A puff from her (his) cigarette. He swallows the nicotine and it burns his throat. She looks at him before he can cough, weary eyes on a tired face.
Inhales. “Lives rotten now.” He does not know whether the exhale that follows is a sigh or an end of breath.
She cannot remember a summer when she did not lose a bracelet. Misplaced, her mother sighs, frame drooping. Replaces it, and that’s the end of that.
But it is not lost. She furrows her eyebrows and thinks about it. They are there when she goes to sleep at night, sitting on her bedside table, green glistening before she closes her eyes into a dreamless abyss. She closes her eyes to mirror the memory. Then what?
She opens her eyes. Looks to where they were. Chews her lip. Not lost. Just -
gone.
There is a lake beside the house and it pastes slivers of sunlight against their house. His uncle tells him it runs into a river, a river that runs into another river, and that river running into the sea. He sits beside it one afternoon, sunburn flushing his skin red.
He flicks his lighter on. Lakes are not blue, someone told him once. They are black and brown, dark like the soil that is beneath them. His fingers fumble for nicotine, clumsy and shaking just slightly, head dizzy with pounding aches. They are like a drum, boom boom boom, and he needs smoke to drown them out, drown himself out before he drowns under them.
He grabs a cigarette. Finally, his brain screams. Finally, and then he sees them on the other side of the lake.
He walks back into the house to smoke with his aunt.
She is not sure what time of the year it is. No wind, so maybe summer. Early summer, when the sun is baking everything with its convection heat. But that can easily be confused with winter, the stagnant kind when nothing can break through frozen limbs.
The sunlight hits him in funny angles. He looks grey and black and weird (foreign to be polite) in between the green and blue horizon.
There is no one else in sight so she watches him. His movement sends ripples through the still country.
There’s something wrong with him, his aunt is convinced, when she sees him walking out of the house. The bulge in his pockets means cigarettes, but the resigned look in his eyes means something. Something, so she lets him out, watching as his bony frame makes its way to the lake.
A heavy hand runs through her dirty hair. She turns back to a meal that he will never manage to eat.
She tilts her head. He remains still, eyes focused on a book in his hand. Twig-like fingers flip pages. There is a checkered blanket beneath him, blue and white, muted to look like the sky.
The sun melts into the horizon. His eyes flit above the pages to meet hers in the purple-orange light. They are dark, dark in light, dark like the lake. Pain etched in pink veins.
She does not look away.
Some days, his limbs tremble. Trembling is not the minimal shiver on the surface of todays and yesterdays. No, it is the convulsing of bones, the reshaping of an outline, the screaming of limbs.
The hell of tomorrow.
(his aunt and uncle leave dinner on the other side of his closed door)
Her mother pounds extra tiles on the roof. Windy days are coming soon, she explains it as, though there’s no need to. She sighs in acknowledgement. This is every year.
The hammer is insistent. Soon, she realizes, she will be wearing rusty brown again.
Everything that goes down his throat tastes like bile. Water, spit, soup. Food. How grotesque it is, he thinks, eating vomit. The world feels heavy, weights of stone compressing him into the ground. Sun gentle on his eyelids. Too gentle to be true.
He thinks about dirtying the lake. It is dark already, he reasons. No one will know. Scoots himself closer to the water, gaunt reflection staring back at him. A slick clean surface reflecting what he likes to ignore. It dares him to do it with a twinkling eye.
Opens his mouth. The finger goes in, and then he sees them.
He vomits on the blanket instead.
The gusts come in flocks. Some are smaller than others, she reckons, tiles rattling on the roof. Some are larger, ripping things away from them, breaking windows. Hurting them.
The wind whistles through imperceptible spaces in the walls. He is reading again, gusts sending corners of pages in flight. He pushes them down with ashen fingers. Like a silhouette, she concludes. Grey and black and weird in between a silvery blue horizon.
Myungsoo!
He feels disoriented.
Myungsoo!
Distant, wandering from the body, watching the wind whip the pages back and forth before his eyes.
Myungsoo!
Who’s name is that?
Myungsoo!
He lays down. Turns his head, and there they are, purple petals reaching for the sky.
He reaches with them.
She watches him stand himself up, bone by bone and joint by joint like a broken stem slowly straightening. She can almost hear the crisp snaps of his body as he finally rises.
He stares at her, eyes dark, dark in light, dark like the lake. Dark and lost. She stares at him.
His lips form a word, a word in the shape of Myungsoo. A name, she notices. Myungsoo. Her tongue tastes it.
He is still watching her. What are you called? she thinks she hears over the wind. It whistles as she clears her throat.
Suzy. Clears it again. Suzy.
Summer is tapering off into the windy season. “I won’t let you go outside,” his aunt says, sharp eyes regarding him slowly. She blocks the door with one arm, an exhausted one, he assumes.
What is her excuse this time? What is his? They stand facing each other, postures slouching with invisible burdens, tired eyes trying to battle. The wind breathes, alive and full of energy, its howls echoing life into the stillness of the house.
You do this to everybody. Takes a shaky breath. His body is trembling again, bones convulsing. You make everyone tired.
The gusts stick her brown dress against her body, sharp winds cutting into her skin. Mother, she tries to scream. Or not scream. Is she saying anything at all? The wind swallows, spits out, rips apart. Everything is a blur, motion and motionless, things falling into her eyes. She shuts them, and sees darkness.
(dark like the lake)
A tile graces her feet. She cannot feel her bracelets on her wrists. Everything is cut, everything is bleeding. The wind cries for more, more destruction, more chaos, more hell.
She bleeds bleeds bleeds, red soaking her rusty brown dress but leaving no stain.
(myungsoo, the lake wind sun aunt uncle says. myungsoo.)
When he returns, the lake is not the same. It is hauntingly still, still like death. But there must be something living in there. (his uncle has told him so) There must be something living in that darkness.
He peers over the edge. He can see nothing from the surface (only his reflection and that is unnecessary) of the depths. His eyes stare and search and stare stare stare but there is nothing, nothing left.
He is about to rise, about to go back, and then he does not see them.
The blue horizon ripples with his movement, fragile bones fighting against a heavy enemy. Toes digging into soil. It is deeper than he thought it would be. Lakes are black and brown, he remembers, like the soil beneath them. Shallow.
He slips, flailing in the water. Weak bones that trembled above water are unable to fight the weight of the lake. He tries to speak. What does he say? The water swallows, embraces, holds him tight.
It will not let go.
(lakes are blue, he realizes as he falls in, deeper. lays down. closes his eyes, and there they are, purple petals reaching for the sky.
he reaches with them.
the clouds slowly become distant. the trembling slows, one shudder, another, then ceases completely)
1,633w; pg-13 (myungsoo/suzy)
and at the end of it all, they looked to the sky.
Some say life is a cycle. Birth, life, death, all interconnected by some wayward string of fate. This string cannot be cut, they reason. These are the people who have a general knack for understanding life as it comes and goes.
These are the people who, unlike others, do not have the capacity to destroy themselves.
She is born in the midst of two springs, rooted in the damp soil of an empty household, emerging through the frothy wake of the water as a derelict child. The world is a scary place, she learns young. Scary and dark.
She wears bright fuchsia to cut through the black.
The country is a soft, rolling carpet of grass. Two shades forest green, one shade lemon yellow. The sun peels across the horizon, into his eyes that cannot take outside.
He has not locked his gaze with the sun for two years. Car exhaust billows from the automobile, ruining their reunion.
On rainy days, she will stand outside. It isn’t her intention to become drenched, she realizes. She just stands outside when the rain begins to drizzle, tickles of drops on her skin, and forgets to go inside once it starts pelting.
Her mother chastises her. How can you forget? Watches the sopping trail her daughter leaves on the blue carpet. Doesn’t move to clean it up. How can you ignore the rain?
She bites her tongue. I don’t. I don’t. Her eyes wander to the ceiling, rain slapping the roof tiles, and wonders if anyone is watching the rain like this, like her.
His aunt tells him stories that he won’t listen to. “You were born good,” she reminisces. “A good child, holding nails for your uncle when he fixed the fence.”
A puff from her (his) cigarette. He swallows the nicotine and it burns his throat. She looks at him before he can cough, weary eyes on a tired face.
Inhales. “Lives rotten now.” He does not know whether the exhale that follows is a sigh or an end of breath.
She cannot remember a summer when she did not lose a bracelet. Misplaced, her mother sighs, frame drooping. Replaces it, and that’s the end of that.
But it is not lost. She furrows her eyebrows and thinks about it. They are there when she goes to sleep at night, sitting on her bedside table, green glistening before she closes her eyes into a dreamless abyss. She closes her eyes to mirror the memory. Then what?
She opens her eyes. Looks to where they were. Chews her lip. Not lost. Just -
gone.
There is a lake beside the house and it pastes slivers of sunlight against their house. His uncle tells him it runs into a river, a river that runs into another river, and that river running into the sea. He sits beside it one afternoon, sunburn flushing his skin red.
He flicks his lighter on. Lakes are not blue, someone told him once. They are black and brown, dark like the soil that is beneath them. His fingers fumble for nicotine, clumsy and shaking just slightly, head dizzy with pounding aches. They are like a drum, boom boom boom, and he needs smoke to drown them out, drown himself out before he drowns under them.
He grabs a cigarette. Finally, his brain screams. Finally, and then he sees them on the other side of the lake.
He walks back into the house to smoke with his aunt.
She is not sure what time of the year it is. No wind, so maybe summer. Early summer, when the sun is baking everything with its convection heat. But that can easily be confused with winter, the stagnant kind when nothing can break through frozen limbs.
The sunlight hits him in funny angles. He looks grey and black and weird (foreign to be polite) in between the green and blue horizon.
There is no one else in sight so she watches him. His movement sends ripples through the still country.
There’s something wrong with him, his aunt is convinced, when she sees him walking out of the house. The bulge in his pockets means cigarettes, but the resigned look in his eyes means something. Something, so she lets him out, watching as his bony frame makes its way to the lake.
A heavy hand runs through her dirty hair. She turns back to a meal that he will never manage to eat.
She tilts her head. He remains still, eyes focused on a book in his hand. Twig-like fingers flip pages. There is a checkered blanket beneath him, blue and white, muted to look like the sky.
The sun melts into the horizon. His eyes flit above the pages to meet hers in the purple-orange light. They are dark, dark in light, dark like the lake. Pain etched in pink veins.
She does not look away.
Some days, his limbs tremble. Trembling is not the minimal shiver on the surface of todays and yesterdays. No, it is the convulsing of bones, the reshaping of an outline, the screaming of limbs.
The hell of tomorrow.
(his aunt and uncle leave dinner on the other side of his closed door)
Her mother pounds extra tiles on the roof. Windy days are coming soon, she explains it as, though there’s no need to. She sighs in acknowledgement. This is every year.
The hammer is insistent. Soon, she realizes, she will be wearing rusty brown again.
Everything that goes down his throat tastes like bile. Water, spit, soup. Food. How grotesque it is, he thinks, eating vomit. The world feels heavy, weights of stone compressing him into the ground. Sun gentle on his eyelids. Too gentle to be true.
He thinks about dirtying the lake. It is dark already, he reasons. No one will know. Scoots himself closer to the water, gaunt reflection staring back at him. A slick clean surface reflecting what he likes to ignore. It dares him to do it with a twinkling eye.
Opens his mouth. The finger goes in, and then he sees them.
He vomits on the blanket instead.
The gusts come in flocks. Some are smaller than others, she reckons, tiles rattling on the roof. Some are larger, ripping things away from them, breaking windows. Hurting them.
The wind whistles through imperceptible spaces in the walls. He is reading again, gusts sending corners of pages in flight. He pushes them down with ashen fingers. Like a silhouette, she concludes. Grey and black and weird in between a silvery blue horizon.
Myungsoo!
He feels disoriented.
Myungsoo!
Distant, wandering from the body, watching the wind whip the pages back and forth before his eyes.
Myungsoo!
Who’s name is that?
Myungsoo!
He lays down. Turns his head, and there they are, purple petals reaching for the sky.
He reaches with them.
She watches him stand himself up, bone by bone and joint by joint like a broken stem slowly straightening. She can almost hear the crisp snaps of his body as he finally rises.
He stares at her, eyes dark, dark in light, dark like the lake. Dark and lost. She stares at him.
His lips form a word, a word in the shape of Myungsoo. A name, she notices. Myungsoo. Her tongue tastes it.
He is still watching her. What are you called? she thinks she hears over the wind. It whistles as she clears her throat.
Suzy. Clears it again. Suzy.
Summer is tapering off into the windy season. “I won’t let you go outside,” his aunt says, sharp eyes regarding him slowly. She blocks the door with one arm, an exhausted one, he assumes.
What is her excuse this time? What is his? They stand facing each other, postures slouching with invisible burdens, tired eyes trying to battle. The wind breathes, alive and full of energy, its howls echoing life into the stillness of the house.
You do this to everybody. Takes a shaky breath. His body is trembling again, bones convulsing. You make everyone tired.
The gusts stick her brown dress against her body, sharp winds cutting into her skin. Mother, she tries to scream. Or not scream. Is she saying anything at all? The wind swallows, spits out, rips apart. Everything is a blur, motion and motionless, things falling into her eyes. She shuts them, and sees darkness.
(dark like the lake)
A tile graces her feet. She cannot feel her bracelets on her wrists. Everything is cut, everything is bleeding. The wind cries for more, more destruction, more chaos, more hell.
She bleeds bleeds bleeds, red soaking her rusty brown dress but leaving no stain.
(myungsoo, the lake wind sun aunt uncle says. myungsoo.)
When he returns, the lake is not the same. It is hauntingly still, still like death. But there must be something living in there. (his uncle has told him so) There must be something living in that darkness.
He peers over the edge. He can see nothing from the surface (only his reflection and that is unnecessary) of the depths. His eyes stare and search and stare stare stare but there is nothing, nothing left.
He is about to rise, about to go back, and then he does not see them.
The blue horizon ripples with his movement, fragile bones fighting against a heavy enemy. Toes digging into soil. It is deeper than he thought it would be. Lakes are black and brown, he remembers, like the soil beneath them. Shallow.
He slips, flailing in the water. Weak bones that trembled above water are unable to fight the weight of the lake. He tries to speak. What does he say? The water swallows, embraces, holds him tight.
It will not let go.
(lakes are blue, he realizes as he falls in, deeper. lays down. closes his eyes, and there they are, purple petals reaching for the sky.
he reaches with them.
the clouds slowly become distant. the trembling slows, one shudder, another, then ceases completely)