the curse is upon me

— Mean Time, Carol Ann Duffy, from 'Mean Time' (1993)

& i hope this is how you’ll always remember us in the future. june is heralded by the singing cicadas, humid breeze, & your lips curling around the rim of an over-sweetened cà phê sữa đá. the cusp of spring to summer has softened the world with a mist. the emerald leaves of freshly cut hedges & swaying cerise-pink blossoms splay against our exposed skin as we brace ourselves for the sudden heat of afternoon. an insinuation of clouds blur the cerulean blue skies & embrace the mountains far in the distance. i grasp your hand with all the rose-gold tint of sentiment colouring my movements. if someone had asked, i would’ve told them the truth — if i could submerge myself in this moment for the rest of my life, in a deluge of every second spent together, i would.

one day, our recollections of this neighbourhood will fall victim to a hazy softness, like the hasty strokes of a paintbrush over an unprimed canvas. but right now, it’s bright & crisp like the edges of just-poured copper. i’ll remember you in these minutes, illuminated at every angle by the gentle sun caressing your features like a lover’s questing fingers. if you could ever recall the times we were inseparable with even a fraction of this guileless affection, i promise i’ll tend to them like the delicate cashmere gardenias & amethyst irises in your mother’s gardens. the heat of the sidewalk underfoot scorch our shoes but i’d endure it even for you. your fingertips graze the dainty aurelian chain around my neck, mindlessly grasping the evergreen jade pendant brushing the dip between my collarbones. everything might change, but this effortless devotion, this simple adoration, has already immortalized itself in this city’s hidden histories.

the imperial reds & yolk-yellows of chinatown colour the margins of our silhouettes. every inch of this place is crooning with a song from yesterday, a chorus of years bolstering the melody. the brush of your knuckles against my waist, the gentle murmur of your voice in my ear. the new boundaries of our world set by the millennium gates. you guide me through the waves of people, hand in hand, & i wish we could’ve lingered here just a little longer. but we’re enclosed in a sea of green while tying up fortunes & laughing at unsteady feet as we jump mossy stones across a stream. i press a fragment of a wild red strawberry against your lips instead of a kiss & hope you understand the words i can’t say.

stifling summer nights & i’m telling secrets only you’ll ever know. every word whispered into the crevice of your neck as we seek solace on the floors of an air-conditioned room. we sleep in each other’s arms & on unforgiving hardwood, blankets strewn all around like children. you’re smiling at something i don’t know about but you’re cast in gold by the incandescent lights we forgot to turn off & i’m too mesmerized to ask. one day, we’ll have to leave this behind, & i already miss it in my little artless heart. i lie awake & you’re scratching your charcoal pencils against the cream paper of your sketchbook. morning light cradles the downy drapes bordering the windows & i sprawl on the length of your legs before breakfast. a record plays in the background, accompanied by the sizzle of a pan & your wholehearted requests to dance in the kitchen. one day, we’ll tell stories of the days we spent wasting away our golden years together. i promise you, i will never want anything more.

This lobed cheek tooth morphology is also seen in other Antarctic seals that form the clade Lobodontini. Interestingly, this includes the leopard seal (above, from Hocking et al., 2012). While known for being an apex predator on smaller pinnipeds and penguins, leopard seals actually feed substantially on krill as well, simultaneously able to feed near the top and bottom of the food chain. In fact, their specialized filter-feeding teeth prevent leopard seals from easily slicing up large prey, which is why they are often photographed violently shaking their kills (below, from Flickr): without the slicing cheek teeth typical of carnivorans, this is how they must process their prey into bite-sized pieces.

“Well Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”

~ Wax model of a decomposing body in a walnut coffin.

Date: 1774-1800