BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

▬▬ 07

TUESDAY
05 NOVEMBER, 1996
DORIAN

               He didn't show. I shouldn't have agreed to this party (it's anything but small). Not that my protest would've stopped it from happening. Nor would it have stopped me from getting my hopes up. The chances were always minuscule. Just because I bumped into him at a party, doesn't mean Isaiah goes to every single one in the city. He might have Bonfire Night plans with his friends... with more than friends.

Sleep is something I won't be getting tonight (my best hope is for everyone to head to clubs in the early morning which might grant me a few hours of silence), but maybe I can get some work done. I did tell Richard I would compose more, compose better. I've been stuck on the same bar like a broken record in the weeks since — Sha-Sha-ay. Isaiah Isaiah Is-s-s-saiah-ah. Sh-Shay. No matter how many pieces I begin, they refuse to emerge beyond his name.

Determined to try, I leave the corner of the communal space I've clung to for the past twenty minutes and that's when I see him.

Isaiah rests against the wall in the no man's land between the joined kitchen and sitting room. It's been a month since our previous encounter and his presence incites the same bedlam. Will glimpses of him always feel like blessings — flood me with love but tarnish it with the knowledge that it's ephemeral, that I'm already stretching my luck, that any one of them could be my last?

He's wearing the same shirt and jeans but his locs are loose, silver cuffs accessorising the ones that frame his face. He scans the crowd though doesn't seem to be looking for anyone in particular (you didn't come here to look for me, this is the last place you'd come to look for me), and reflects my own dissatisfaction to be here even if he came of his own free will. Then again, so did I...

I tread my path to him. Shuffle on the spot three feet away.

'Why aren't you dancing?' (Am I not capable of a plain hello?)

If he's surprised by my presence, he doesn't show it. Still slumped against the wall as he watches the celebration, he shrugs. 'Ain't my music.'

He's lying through his teeth. That's not what guts me. It's the fact he knows I know and he does it anyway.

There's no such thing as "not his music"; Isaiah will dance to anything. He used to force me to learn line dance choreography by the river — You from Suffolk, cuz, you gotta know how. He would always hold my hand though the whole point of line dancing is to not require a partner.

I'm lost to memories for a moment until the present-time Isaiah corrects himself.

'Don't dance no more.' His tone is bored; he's not ashamed of being caught in a lie but it turned out less of a thrill than he hoped so he might as well try the truth.

Before I can pry, he turns to me and the "why?" decomposes on my tongue. (Has he had a flare?) He's exhausted. (Is he in the midst of one?) Isaiah was tired the day I met him but his eyes always soaked with life. (Why is he here then?) Now though, the earth of his irises has leeched to infertile dirt. (Should I say something, offer Paracetamol though we both know it might as well be a TicTac?) He's too fatigued even to mimic the loathing of our last meeting.

His glance lingers on the embroidered white kippah on top of my waves. He doesn't filter his surprise, though I can't tell whether it's the colourful flowers that take him aback or the fact I'm wearing one at all. He isn't. After growing up in Halsett, the violent anti-Semitism of the rest of the world is a train crash.