Thicker Than Paper

Subsist

Strange and almost scary. Sickly familiar and terrifyingly overwhelming. The Lake is ice cold, but not quite ice yet. Still liquid enough to send the little paper crane into the dark. Still cold enough to freeze everything in time.

~~~

I hadn't done it the entire time we'd been here. Maybe because I couldn't think of a good enough excuse to leave Logan alone with my parents every night. Maybe because for some strange reason, I was scared. 

Scared for something to happen. Scared it'd all come back to me, hit me like a whip to the heart. Maybe I was scared nothing would happen. Maybe I was scared because everything did happen.

I don't know why exactly it all started. I first learned how to fold a paper crane in the sixth grade, but of course, I had forgotten how to by junior year. Bored and depressed, I fiddled around on my computer not wanting to do anything in particular. Then, suddenly I was trying to figure out how to fold a paper crane again. 

By the third crane of the night, I felt defeated. So, before I folded the paper, I wrote that word down in thin letters. Defeated. I put the crane in my pocket, not wanting anyone to find it in my room. It was stupid, but it was all I could think about. 

Then, after an end of summer party, I remembered the old, disgusting lake no one really went around. I remembered taking walks with Sarah and my mom when I was a kid. I remember feeding the occasional geese that flew in. I hadn't been back in years.

But, suddenly I was. Sanding in mud and twigs and bird shit. The moon reflected off the dark water and I became hyper-aware of the crumpled up paper crane in my pocket. I stared at the crane as best as I could in the dark but didn't unfold it to read the words sloppily written inside, because I already knew what it said. I would always know what it said. Defeated.

I dropped it. It bounced up and under the water, but didn't swim too far away because of the strange lack of wind for a fall night. I was mad. Mad I knew exactly what the stupid little white paper crane read. Defeated. I was mad about why I felt like that, mad I'd always feel like that. 

I kicked the water. It stumbled away. I was alone again. My defeat floating away in a nasty little excuse for a lake. 

I stumbled away too.

Then I was back. Again and again with paper cranes that read one sick word that made my heart hurt and brain spin. Breathing, blood, rejection, teamwork, hope. About a hundred words hidden in a hundred stupid little origami birds. But I did it over and over. All in the lake till I didn't have the lake. That didn't stop them from multiplying.

I had no reason to be doing them, they didn't necessarily give me any sense of relief or closure. Sometimes i wonder if i do them because it's familiar. Constant. In my control as i live in a world with no control. I'd laugh because it sounded like something a therapist would say. Maybe I'd spent too much time around therapists. Maybe therapists are just as depressed as I am.

I can't help but feel my throat close up and my eyes burn as I stand at the edge of the water. Yeah, I was definitely scared of all the things that have happened. All the things that will happen. I don't want to cry, not in front of Logan. But I'm going to. It seems like a good thing to do right now. Strangely enough, this situation isn't the one that should make me cry. I can think of a least twenty off the top of my head that I should have cried at but didn't. Now here I am, crying at a fucking lake at one in the goddamn morning.

And it feels appropriate. Easy. Right.

"Phoenix? Are you okay," I give a small, sad smile to Logan, feeling the warmth of his hand on my arm.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm okay," I wipe tears off my face and turn back to the lake, "It's just weird. I don't know, looking back on everything and seeing how it's all... come back to this. I came here probably two times a week, junior and senior year. Then I came here whenever I was back on a break, or for a birthday or something. I don't know why, but it just hasn't caught up with me till now."

"Why'd you come here so often?" I can tell he's wondering why anyone would come here.

"Remember all those origami cranes in the trash can in my room?" He nods, "Well, they use to be floating here. Whenever I made one I'd write something in it. An emotion, action, something. One word. Then at night I'd sneak out and let them float off in the lake. I don't know why it just became a habit."

He nods again, "Do you have one now? To put in the lake, I mean. Is that why you wanted to come here?"

He knew me too well. I smile at him again, and take his face between my hands, leaning out foreheads together.  I holding him. I like the noises of nature around us. The chill in the air, the moon staring down at two little boys in each other's embrace.

"Yeah."

He doesn't move but to put his hands around me. And we stand there like that for more than necessary. But we do. Neither of us says anything. Neither of us makes a move to break away. The only moving thing is our chests as we breathe, and branches in the wind.

The shit I've come to this lake for. All the times I wanted to cry, all the cuts and blood. All the mistakes, and lessons. All the friends I've gained and lost. All the love I've been too scared to try for. All the broken hearts. All the pot-flies and parties. All the emotions and ideas I didn't understand. All the fear and nerves. 

Every little thing that has happened in over four years.

From trigonometry with Ace in a classroom with barely twenty students to anthropology with fifty other people I only know the name of five. From sneaking out of and into the house trying not to wake my mom, to hoping my roommates have the decency to try and be quiet when they come home. From straight little high school boy to boy in a relationship with another boy. From a growing city in Wyoming to a college town in California. 

Everything from the first time I let a paper crane swim in the lake has changed in some way. For better or for worse.  

I kiss Logan on the lips, light and slow, before breaking out of our embrace. He doesn't follow me as I get as close to the water as possible, and I appreciate that. I crouch down, my hand fumbling in my sweatshirt pocket. 

It's a little crumbled, not bad. I straighten the wings and smooth out some of the lumps. It's colder than the first time a crane lay in this lake. So different, yet eerily similar. 

I let my fingers dip in the fridged water, the crane swaying lightly on the uncertain water. The wind is strong enough tonight to take it away without my assistance, and that makes me a little sad.

I stand up, put my hands in my pockets and watch the little crane dance on the cold water. I won't forget the word of the first crane, I won't forget the word on the last. 

Subsist.