Flowerstoryfan

Ummm 😳 we do writing here; it’s mainly to house all the things I write into my notes app but like I’m running out of iCloud space so yeah… yipppee

Our shadows on the brick pavement, melt together, no beginning or end just heat bounding from stone to stone—it’s own weird game of leapfrog

It reminds me of crashing waves, sandy shores and coughed up bile. I remember it almost like a hurricane, twisted currents worming their way between us. Slow to start and then crashing wind, blocked ears and the dizzying feeling.

The rip throwing us out, the ocean around us glistening like glitter in carpet. The tide catching us, pushing us down over and over again. It’s like a skeleton in my closet, rearing its head only slightly on the darkest of nights, haunting me always. It should be scary how comfortable the bones feel—only brought about by time and the continuous churning. (Like the ocean).

What I don’t remember is the escape, the rescue and the deep sense of relief. I think of it as if I was alone a singular person on that beach, but it’s distorted, fractured alone the lines of thought. If I squint, work my brain I see them. My parents crouched over my sister. And me still alone hunched over, bile and salt wetting the sand under me. My back hurts where she had dug her nails in, holding on against the tides, my heart hurts they don’t look.

I watch again now as their shadows leave me, walk faster a small voice croaks, I see the small child on the beach, hands clenched around sand gripping whatever he could, catch up don’t let them forget you. But then I look up see the distance and wonder what that would do, let it stretch a bit more, wonder when or even if they’ll feel the tug of my absence—

Its methodic—the breathing, the staggering, the stepping—the soft thuds in my ears as one foot falls in front of another.

In no time I am at the bridge. Solid concrete interwoven with metal. My breathing slows, my thoughts fizzle off to a simmer.

In the corners of my eyes I can see glimpses of traffic, lights ricocheting from headlamps, casting my silhouette into the water below.

Off somewhere, a slow memory awakens, blooming it grows into my chest. Simple humming lingering in the cold air around me. Shimmering into focus, as I reach further in.

The water beckons but I turn to the sound more. And I see him there, hands gliding over keys, smooth on a summer day, I know those hands those calluses, I look up expecting Aidan but find Kyan’s face instead. A smile erupting as I pass him nothing but a plain bun. There’s laughter around us, distinct faces now lured into one another, soft curtains, fresh tangerines.

The surface of the water seems too far now, tides between me and my memories. My heart lingers on the bridge however, long after I’ve walked away.

Legs heavy as lead I walk into the shower.

It’s methodical, the falling and the crashing. The slow spiral into nothingness. The etchings of finality.

Grief is always resounding.

I’ve commited you to memory—a singular mention of your name whispered into the heat of the summer air.

You live there, linger between the gaps of my mind. I carry it regardless of the pain because to lose the last ounce of you would be worse.

I’ll bear it. So you live on

But then I see you, we’re rounding the same carcass, I remember we are not the same, I’m not your crow.

My hunger is heavier, dirtier—as most carnivores’ are.

We’ve been lulled into this same game too many times, but still there you are.

Blood slicked, battle worn.

We never stop our endless pursuit, this dance of hesitation.

They arrive at the beach at noon, their cars pull in slowly, like the tide. The air is brisk, stale with salt, it coats the back of her throat when she steps out. 

Out in the distance she catches a glimpse of something, a tracing in the sand—small flicker of light and the memories wash up like sea glass. 

They’re like a trance that pull her to the shore, shoes abandoned. A summer breeze rushes past her, they’re wading amongst the water, shells glistening between their fingers, sand up to their thighs. They’re laughing. 

But it’s not summer.

The cold wind creeping up her spine tells her that. She can make out the clatter from their unpacking and the slight shouting that travels up to her. 

“It's too cold for this” Rom’s voice caries the clearest. Behind him, she sees Sylvia and Malum carrying out the mats, they say something back, but she can’t make it out. In front of her thou, there with her by the waves, is Aidan. Again. 

“It’s weird, you know.” He turns, looks at me, maybe past me, at some memory of us all holding hands, feet dug into the sediment.

“I told myself that I was alone now, again, and I was ok with that this time. But I rehearsed what I’d say to you, to all of you, when you came back to me.”

In the quiet of my bedroom, the hushed whimpers into the wood on my decking, spirited mornings and golden sunlight, “I’d tell you about my dad and homes that weren’t really homes,” the tide retreats, “and if you think about it wasn’t that me just hoping I would see you guys again?”

Then crashes back in, out and then in again. We sigh in tandem, it breaks something between us. I look over, at home. Not place, just person, people.

I know the smile is weak, but I let myself have that, enjoy what I can and maybe a little more. I cup them in my hands, these moments shining in kaleidoscopic projection.

“I hated you so much”

Her hands move through my hair, graze slightly against my scalp and cradle the soft edges.

She looks away then, I follow her eyes out to the open yard. Small fairy lights litter her shrubs, dandling and weaving through the branches, then winding up the tree that stood in the corner. 

Everything is slightly tilted from my angle, but it's hard to forget. I trace the pattern of the fairy lights in my mind.

“Tell me next time you leave,” her voice comes out in faint whispers, it melts into the quiet buzz around us. 

“I will.” And it feels more like I’m sorry than a promise.

The air in her backyard has the same stillness it always did, its stagnation feels lonely. Like a dull blade, cutting deeper with the years that stretched between. 

She nods slightly, ok, but it feels more like begging, stay please stay—a cruel desperation.

It hurts more when I look up to see the small tears that line her cheeks.  The moment stays etched into us long after the evening. I replay it as I drive home and hope she sleeps instead of thinking about it. 

The knocks echo into the living room, hurried footsteps resound a few moments later, down stairs and on wooden floors, then the door opens. 

“Did you forget something?” The dry laugh makes me choke, her red rimmed eyes tell more. 

It grows up from his belly into his heart, then his throat. It takes him a while. To realise its bile, mangled sickness sitting alongside his tongue. He lets it sit there focusing on the slide of acid against his teeth.

It’s rancid.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were here,” she said “would you like to join us for dinner?”

He nods a small no, words clogged too deep within him—tongue too paralysed.

And no matter how much it breaks him the world keeps going. He find his way home, past the hedges and play grounds gone silent. In his room the tears slow down into small drops coating his eyelashes. He wipes away at them but finds they never leave. In his relentless pursuit they start up again, like waves crashing against cliff sides—unrelenting.

He picks at the small scab on his knuckles, crusted over, it stings less now when he washes the dishes. Dries them and takes them out to the table. The morning sun slithering in under the lace curtains. He set the place mats first, tucking in their frayed edges as he goes around, over and over, like a dance or merry-go-round. Morning routine so deeply ingrained within his synapses, his hand refused any change. 

“Put that back.” The words halter his pattern, shock holding him in place as the bowl overs above its spot. “There’s no need for it anymore” it was absolute, new doctrine cast into, onto him. He hesitates however, bowl still hovering, hand still wearing, hoping that he had heard wrong. But his father has long since looked away, and he can hear his mother still cursing in the other room. 

The words crawl into him slowly, he raises the bowl back, cradles it and the old utensils, place mat too, to the cupboard. Stores them away in the best way he can. 

The summer heat leads him into the cafeteria for lunch. He takes his food and set them down as he takes off his jacket and watches as the others walk in. Looks away before they can see more of him. Picks more at the scabs on his hands, evidence of the fight still scored there. The pain wells up more than he would like, he looks up again, wondering if they had walked away already. 

“So, this is where you went?” Her voice is low, but her eyes are sharp, “a bit obvious, no?” 

Malum hovers over him, eyes darting, searching through him. He hopes she finds nothing there, hopes the sigh she lets out is something else, not of sympathy or worse, understanding. The tray in her hands drops down softly next to him, her hands come up, ushering him to scoot over. 

“Make some room they’re coming,” his eyes shoot toward the doors, slowly he can make them out in the crowd as they make their way over to their table.

“There’s not enough seats here Mal,” she looks at him, as the others pull over chairs, dumbfounded.

running on so little rn but I feel like this probably should just be a post in itself. So like I’m still writing the swap but i guess i also tried drawing it a bit

“I’ll never love you the same.” I voice it without knowing, realisation bloomed into reality, my voice is steady regardless. 

I look at her with fresher eyes. I see us again on that hill, summer heat dancing around us as we found ourselves on a singular bench. 

But here when it’s us, again—just us, I feel it like loss. The aching subsides somehow, slow when we first saw each other and then like a wound stitching together, it had stopped without our knowing. It had changed us though, as wounds tends to do— as healing tends to do. 

Her face doesn’t crumple, or maybe it does and I miss it.

“You could live here!” She jumps up, excitement jolting me out of my daze.

“I have a whole extra room and Mal's just a road way, I could drive us to uni,” and I knew what she was doing, I’d seen myself doing it too, holding on as the waves crashed around us, “it’s perfect come on!!”

It’s then when it comes out too quickly for me to hold: “What happens if we don't? We could go to different unis, you don’t know the future,” the realisation dawns slowly, I look back at her as it does. I search her carefully years of her stare back at me, faces upon faces, masks upon masks, but I see it regardless, there beside the cracks, the fickler of disappointment.

She gets up quickly, walking away to the kitchen, cups in hand, denial written out in her path away from me. I etch the pain into my heart, soul screaming to reach out and savour the time we have. But I learn it instead, the look of her back, face turned, her anger and hatred of me in that singular moment. And I wish I could tell her.

“Hey, you wanna stay over? It’s kinda late, right?”

The smile that washes over her face is electric, she giggles slightly at the stupidity of it, sun shining through the deck window to mock her. 

It’s hard to resist her this time, to say no and let go before it’s time.