IOU (Poetry Preview)

where the earth splits in half

Okinawa Prefecture
2016, March 19th

The kiss tastes sour. It tastes like the crystalized sugar dust from those Lawson gummy worms he tucks right into his cheek as a habit. It tastes like the way he'd pull me up the familiar grassy slope to wedge our shadows between skinny bungalows, of how he'd grin when I would finally decide to smile back at him like I didn't understand why he's doing this. It tastes like settling, like something back-heavy crawling right under my stomach. Almost like the guilt glossing his eyes whenever he leans in. Almost like my splintered hands circling his waist and getting caught up in his pockets full of candy wrapper. Almost like it didn't sting in this tropical weather.

The way hopeless romantics and poets described kisses were nothing less than magical — but as I've began to understand with him, this isn't magic. This is just two mouths finding each other. No reason, no sparks of light behind closed lids, just moving lips and decay.

My heart's thumping, but not in a way that made my feet back up and fall off of the edge. It's in my ears. I feel like my face could be felt pulsing with him so close. It feels strange — how we can both feel how warm my neck is getting, how I can feel his hands clench on the damp wall behind my back. How I sometimes feel like I'm drowning.

"Do you like me?" He once asked, hands busy with his camera propped on his knees, bag dropped next to me on the sand. His eyes don't meet mine. The air remains sweltering, the salt carried by the Pacific sticking against my cheeks. He angles his camera towards my face, a way to momentarily fix his evasive gaze on me.

I don't hear the shutter. No click.

"I don't know." I say, looking at the lens. "Would it matter?"

He doesn't answer, instead he calmly leans in to slot his lips on mine. The offhanded kiss feels out of place. His camera is still in his hands. I know, because this time my eyes are open. I watch his closed eyes flutter ever so slightly, eyelashes brushing my cheek, like the butterfly wings that should've been in my stomach — like the flying insects in the cheesy excerpts I write about during lazy afternoons; bugs crowding insides to describe something good, even when it sounds like the exact opposite.

When he moves away, he smirks and I sit there quietly for a while as he fiddles with his camera. The sun disappears, but we stay tucked near the sea wall. The isolating darkness blankets the coast and our backs, turned away and refusing to face the streets that knew our faces.

"Would you die for love?" I mutter under my breath, looking up at the sky, at the stars that looked at me every night as I slowly waste away in my grandfather's town. An island detached from everything else, from everything I could've been if I hadn't settled.

"What a stupid thing to ask."

I chuckle at his hiss. Always so moody. It's dark and we can't see a thing but the distant lights on the shoreline's curve and each other's ghostly silhouettes. I feel him sigh through the noise of the waves that are beginning to caress our feet.

"Even if it's foolish, I would like to die for someone I love." I mutter, moving to lay down on his lap. My hands blindly find his pockets. They're empty. "I think it's the closest to a martyred path when leaving this planet."

"What do you mean?"

A long sigh escapes me, his hand grabbing my burrowing hands to hold me in place. "I'm saying that I want to love someone enough that I could die."

"Wanting to die and dying for someone are two different things."

"What's the difference?" I breathe out a laugh, playing with one of his uniform buttons next to where he has my hands pinned, the gold glimmering against his camera's dim screen.