How to Be Human [EDITING]

20 | strawberry honey glaze

20

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THE SPRING OF 2007
Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

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The months blur together as Jisung goes back and forth between electroconvulsive sessions and a thin cot in the nurse's quarters—confined in a whitewashed room with no windows. Sometimes, he's offered pills that make his skin burn up as if it's his first day in Hell; tongue too big for his mouth; the world around him transfiguring into molasses.

Miss Soo calls this a side effect of the procedure. Sana, his consistent lunchmate, calls it batshit crazy.

Sometimes, he is fed a thin, watery soup: a "meal" that makes his stomach lurch. The nurses don't care when he vomits. It's only more reason to feed him again. Some days, Jisung looks at himself in the mirror, examining the way his ribs protrude, wondering if he'll look like Sana one day.

Sometimes, the nurses try to hold his hand and speak to him softly, as though he were a small child. As if the treatments aren't killing him slowly.

'You'll feel better soon, sweetie,' they whisper, as Jisung's blood boils and his head throbs with an oncoming migraine. 'God is proud of you.'

Jisung clings to hope like a lifeline, that God is proud of him, that one day he'll be saved and will no longer feed into the desires that landed him here.

But there are days when he doubts.

There are days where he wonders if anyone cares that he's rotting away.

There are days where he dreams of Californian sunsets, strawberry rice cakes between his teeth, and a brunet thief who stole his heart.

There are days where the phantom of Minho Lee's lips on his own is so strong, Jisung feels like clawing his mouth out.

He's supposed to be getting better...yet, he's slowly rotting, decomposing.

He's still bisexual. He's still ruined. He still hasn't been fixed.

There are days where he prays to God to make him better. To give him the strength to overcome the devilish desires that plague him. To save him from eternal damnation. To free him from flickering flames and brimstone.

There are days where his prayers go unanswered.

It's been nearly four months since he's arrived at Saint Augustine's. Stll, Jisung looks at MiMi's grumpy face, lip quivering, eyes of kerosene, attached to a man he shouldn't have loved. Still, he clutches MiMi close to his chest at night before bed, dreaming of beautiful blue skies and candied honeycombs—of plush pink lips and the afterburn of cigarette ash.