#(r:p)

Do you remember living?

Somewhere, within the wasteland he refers to as memoir, he remembers their first spring in Tuscany. A man-made oasis nestled somewhere between the Years of Lead. That spring, he had dragged himself  from border to border only to realize there is no heaven on the other side. That in the end, all men are hopeless, all condemned to the same purgatory. And as all those deemed penurious, he kneels before the nearest cathedral and awaits an early death. He resurrects at dawn, salvation standing  before him in the form of Kaoru, smiling, veiled by the first gleam of tomorrow with a grace  he had not witnessed in decades 

“Welcome home.”  Thus he chooses his own god.

He remembers mass on Sunday mornings, Kaoru’s gospel drowned by children’s hushed laughter as they line up for communion. Before the last amen, they run out of the chapel, their white robes swaying in the wind as they race to resume playtime. Kaoru urges him to follow and for the afternoon he lives a boyhood he never had. By the time they return it is dusk, their cheeks flushed by the sun, their robes dyed of  pastures, their hands clutching onto red poppies as they bid him  farewell. After midnight, Kaoru resembles Moloch. He carves a sanctum out of his ribcage, deludes him to believe home lies somewhere between his talons. “This is home.” Despite the congregation of vultures looming outside their church every Sunday, despite the vermin puncturing his lungs while he hangs from Kaoru´s halo, despite the clamor of eidolons pleading him to beware of the false prophet. Yet he believes. (He feels sick. He feels fucking sick). 

He remembers ´heaven´, how they encapsulated eternity in two springs and three winters. A self fabricated Eden composed by pretenses of tomorrow and upheld by a delusion they called faith. During daylight, they settled in borrowed youth. During the evenings, Kaoru shrouded reality under the night mantle and offered him Arcadia. Do you miss home? “This is my home.” 

He remembers heaven, how God cast him out of it.

Do you remember dying?

In their third winter, Kaoru dragged Cain to Gethsemane. His god now draped atop a chancel as he watches how the vultures  finally descend to peck between his ribs. They had come to take him, to destroy the pseudo-sanctum he had desperately built in the span of two years. And he is crying. Clawing through soil as three men bludgeon him close to death, suffocating in his own blood and bile. Why? And he is eight again, desperately clutching onto his mother´s skirt as a plea for her to not let them take him. He will be quiet. He will be obedient. He will be good just please let him stay. Why? And he is twenty eight, reaching for Kaoru´s robe as they crack his ribs one by one, praying for pity, for salvation, for a miracle. In his last moments of consciousness, Kaoru murmurs his obituary.

“This is the answer you have been looking for.”

Thus oblivion consumed their Eden.

At 10 p.m. he wakes up in a cold sweat, heaving, his palms pressed against his ribs only to find these intact. Three decades after the fall of men, Earth rids him of every yesterday and welcomes him in the form of ‘Jaeyeon’. Twenty four, again, lost in a city he barely recognizes.The slums he grew up in now barren to concrete, morphed into a howling necropolis they may garnish in city lights yet still rots all the same. Outside his window, Seoul weeps in a last farewell to winter. He listens in silence, and prays to somehow halt his existence once more. 

Kaoru had been gone for decades, yet he plagued his thoughts every evening. In dreams, in nightmares. By the end of February, he learns Kaoru´s memoir may have left yet his soul still wanders this Earth. Twenty four, again. Degenerate, again. Even beyond this realm, he scratches at a wound Jaeyeon thought no longer existed. The first time they meet again his hand coils around his throat in horror, swears he sees him flail wildly in a futile attempt to escape (kill him, kill the traitor, kill the false prophet) only to realize he cannot do it. He cannot. 

The following days had been marred by a tense stillness between them and he begins to ponder if Kaoru is but a figment of his own delusions. He may lie to himself every night, yet reality always dawns upon him the next morning. The second time they meet, again, both find themselves hanging from the rooftop to gaze at the precipice, both shrouded by a secular solitude today may never grasp. The winter had withered Kaoru´s garden, poisoned Jaeyeon´s for another decade. From the corner of his eye, he watches him attempt to hide in the corner, bathed in a dim moonlight; he may barely  recognize his skin now flushed by the evening breeze, bruised and bandaged from their earlier encounter. All airs of grandeur he held in the past now nothing but a carcass. For a fleeting moment, guilt pricks at Jaeyeon´s gut only to be buried next to their first spring. Neither move, neither speak. Sometimes, Jaeyeon likes to believe Kaoru remembers him. He likes to believe the pitiful frown on his semblance is his doing, believe vermin gnaw at his conscience as penance, believe the happier days lie somewhere behind his sternum. That he existed.

“Thank you-” Barely audible amidst white noise. “-for not pressing charges.” No response. Cautiously, he steps close enough for his umbrellas´s brim to shield the latter.

Kill Your Darlings (2013 Movie): Sentence Starters // not accepting

Night timeserves as haven for the unfortunate. Flesh and bones condemned to a world ofsmoke and mirrors, craving for a constant between changing seasons, craving forquietude in a world corroded by white noise.  It serves as penance for the specious, thosewho strive to be deemed as fortunate in broad daylight when they are but soulsin mid decadence. Scourge clawing at a senile rib cage, tearing their flesh toshreds for we may lie to the world but not to ourselves.

It servesas a home for the human. Suffocated by countless sins, drowning in a sea of yesterdays and even then, they hang on.

If it wasn’tlike this, why else would they search for beacons of light in the darkesttimes? Standing on the world´s end with their gazes fixed to the stars, forthose who are not born with these in their eyes are bound to search the heavensfor what they never held. They may have the universe to hold them in slumber,but a lone soul always yearns for the constellations. Sleepless nights, heavyconscience, soon it all becomes nothing but part of a routine. An endless cyclethey are bound to repeat over and over.

Until thisone is broken.

He pausesat the silhouette leaning against the rail, engraves in his thoughts thewistful expression dawning upon the latter´s features as it holds a certainresemblance to a distant memory for him. The loss of everything, the exhaustionof a lifetime, the prologue of a downfall, all written across the man´s semblanceas he seemed to be more interested in the fall than the skies.

“…Tomorrowwill be better.” Although his voice is steady it still holds a tinge of uncertainty to it, leaving in question how many times has he voiced those four words to himself.“You know that´s not true.” His voice cracks near the end, as if he had witnessed theexact moment skies bend before the fall, as if the world reached its peak andnothing else is left for tomorrow. This is not the sorrow of a man that lost allbut a man who never felt as if he had anything to begin with.

Kill Your Darlings (2013 Movie): Sentence Starters

“I...” Anxiety cuts him off as wits don’t come in handy under these circumstances. He wants todeny any claims, wants to deem everything as a misunderstanding of hers. But he knowsbetter, thus he swallows his words. 

Don´t looksurprised, you reap what you sow.

The accomplicedeserves the same hell as the transgressor. After all, we are but mosaics ofevery single person who crossed our way. Shards of those who left us behind,all lined up to satisfy our own ideals. We may lie to ourselves; claim it isnot broken although we may see the cracks, lay our dregs in gold and refer tothem as precious, preach art´s bore out of the deepest wounds and yet we remainas nothing. De trop.

Thisconcept, as many others, does not apply to Celia.

Scraping atevery single crack, tearing wounds that never healed, unearthing regretsunknown to anyone but ourselves (or so we believed) and yet none of this willbe done by her hand. She will bat her lashes and hand you the knife, she will ask nicely for you to do it and you (without an option) will comply. 

Kill Your Darlings (2013 Movie): Sentence Starters // accepting

-

Music voices what words may not fathom. Thesoliloquy of those who have fallen and those who never learned to let go. Themelody of an ever changing world that refuses to cease whether it be from the darkestpits to the brightest ends. The anthem of all that refuses to be reduced tomere syllables.  Regardless of how muchwe try, humankind will never be able to hold the universe in words. This onenever belonged to us anyway. 

Fingers pace from black to white keys, color bursting from the monochrome in a melody he may only define as ´home´. Another nocturne hushing the streets ofSeoul to sleep until he may feel a weight on his shoulder once his brother iscradled by slumber. And he plays, and plays, until there is nothing left toplay for. In that moment, he is alive. Heis under heaven´s light as the world falls to silence, listening to notes hehas dedicated to this one.  Listening tohim strip his soul in the most beautiful way possible. And he plays, and heplays, until there is nothing left. 

“That was beautiful, kid.” Fantasy always is.

Words pierce through the stillness he hadbuilt within those four walls. One that may only be compared to the peacefollowing catastrophe or the silence left after rapture, a relieving emptiness. But he yearns for what was there once. His gazeaverts from the piano, hands falling from its keys until they are resting backon his lap while he searches through the empty seats until it falls on a woman.Young, beautiful, she is spring herself serving as audience for winter´smelancholy.  

Solacecomes in the form of self-destruction. Pressure crushing our ribs in order to makeroom for a beating heart. Flames kissing our lungs, consuming them slowly inbillows of smoke because breathing sulfur is better than not breathing at all.We place a gun to our temples in order to cleanse the thoughts of restless mindand smothering in gun powder the reasons against. We rot from the inside out becausewe were taught that the most beautiful flowers bloom within wastelands.

Solace isfound in the form of self-destruction because we have been fed bullshit in theform of a romanticism.

Tonight’slies in the fissure of Minseok’s lips, embers lighting up his features withevery drag he takes and fall with every single breath. The cigarette is thegun, the flames, the pressure for both but it is only solace for one. Codeine forone and a noose for the other. If that is the case, isn’t then the word nothingbut a faulty concept? Is that the reason why he wastes his time in futileattempts to rip the cigarette off the other’s hold until he is told off? Isthis why he keeps on trying over and over regardless of the fact he has lostcount?

“If I wereyou, I´d give up.” And through the suffocating mist, truthhad never been spoken as clearly when annoyance edges his voice.. Because one cannot change a person to theirown ideals in search for a peace of mind. Coax the devil into the form of asavior, wash the blood of their hands and their sins between prayers then burythe remnants beside the same church. No matter what, the essence remains thesame.The noosetightens and a silent I’m considering itdies at the back of his throat. Burying itself in a graveyard of the untold, waitingto rot in the crevices of his rib-cage and bloom into something ‘better’. 

A breath knocked out of his lungs as nails dig slightly on the mattress, a sensation of happiness tinged with an unsettling sensation, born off faith in his heart and a mind marred with a faint poignancy. That same one that leaves a knot in his throat that he may not swallow down. That same one easily reduced to nothing when lips meet his skin between whispers.

Think about it, you can live centuries, you can travel miles, you may reign above all and yet, that hollowness is bound to remain unfulfilled. Perhaps it was a piece they forgot to put in its respective place when human kind was created and thus we are condemned to spend a lifetime searching for this one piece. Making amends for what was never our fault.

That is, perhaps, our purpose in life.

Yet they find one another, whether it be by a mere coincidence or by fate.He learns what love is in an April. It is solace, a pair of hands entwined in his, a voice to silence the excruciating thoughts, an ideal he thought for so long as impossible. And when his skin meets the latter´s it is not death lurking in a near future but a hope of life brooding in his chest. He may not be perfect, but he doesn´t want perfect. He learns to love in the ocean, cradled by the waves and their voices in a symphony to keep them ashore.  And when he says he loves him it doesn´t leave a bitter taste on his lips. And when the words reach his ears, they don´t leave a doubt in his thoughts. He finds completion in a figure fitting perfectly with his, in eyes filled with wonder and lips curled in the sheerest joy. He finds completion in a voice muffled against his skin every night and the same dragging him out of sleep every morning. He finds completion in his future, his past, his present, the universe kept within meat and bones. All of it under the name of Thomas Oh.