catharsis.

hana · haki. [花吐き · 病]

HANAHAKI BYOU (N):

AN ILLNESS BORN FROM ONE-SIDED LOVE, WHERE THE AFFLICTED COUGHS UP FLOWERS OR FLOWER PETALS. KNOWN CURES – SURGICAL REMOVAL, OR RECIPROCATED AFFECTIONS. FAILURE TO RECOVER IS FATAL.

✧

I first coughed up the petals a month after my 14th birthday.

as with all firsts, it came as a shock, the bathroom sink overflowing with vibrant shades of red and yellow – vermillion, burgundy, daffodil, flax.

red like blood, yellow like a blossoming bruise. red like a broken heart.

I gathered up the soggy and revolting remnants, still feeling the thorns scratch their way up my throat as I threw them into the trash.

ashamed, ashamed, ashamed. with tears burning behind my eyelids and prickling roots curling their way around my windpipe.

the disease lasted two years. it lasted far too long.

but he felt like sunshine and summer and everything good, so I swallowed the blood and hoped it didn't stain my smile.

✧

three months after I turned fifteen, the sickness came again.

to be accurate, it never left. only that the petals bled from red to blue and a new boy with crooked glasses and a quicksilver smile took up a permanent occupancy in my mind.

sapphire, azure, cornflower, turquoise. he'd laugh and tease me – told me that I ought to give up the ghost to the lucky bastard before I choked on all those pretty little petals.

I'd only smile. pause. consider. I thought that maybe one day my stomach would stop churning with the remains of dead flowers, or that maybe he had petals of his own, and that they were the color of my hair under the sunlight.

I was wrong.

nine months after I saw him kissing another girl, the doctors took seven hours to untangle the roots wound around the knobs of my spine.

✧

after that, I'd still have my run-ins with the flower sickness from time-to-time, though it never lasted too long or produced as grave a result.

(you need to be more careful, my doctor said, a knowing, thoughtful look in her eye. your body can't handle the amount of love you have left to give.)

time passed. wounds healed. walls were built. and then college began, where I was certain I would not make the same mistake.

but I could not say the same for the boy who'd stare at the back of my head during class, the one who wanted me to call him mine.

✧

"it's been two weeks now," he tells me. I stare at the fistful of petals crumpled inside his palm.

"we met two weeks ago," I say dryly. cruel, but necessary. a sudden, irrational spike of fear needles its way into the back of my brain.

he smiles shyly, and somehow the gesture seems both bold and foolish. "I know."

I exhale sharply, turning my attention to the mutilated flowers. the blooms are ink-black and shot through with gold veins, with the occasional amber-yellow petals tucked between the rest.

my heart hardens. "if you know what's good for you, you'll get rid of it."

that knowing smile again, and something in it makes me falter. "something tells me that I'm not going to want to."

✧

his hand in my hair. his lips on my neck.

I love you, he whispers again and again, breathless in his devotion. his mouth leaves traces of pollen and honey on the curve of my shoulder.

my eyes flutter shut and I sink into the moment, his hand dipping between my thighs. I can't bear to tell him the same.

✧

the both of us tiptoe around it like it's a maze of brambles.

he wants to know why the flower sickness has stopped. I don't want to give him an answer.

(you shouldn't be afraid, my friend tells me, all kind eyes and gentle hands. if it's something you want, you should hold on to it. give it a try.)

I sigh. squeeze my eyelids so tightly together that it hurts. think of past hurts and past loves and phantom scars lining the walls of my throat.

and then I pick up the phone. punch in numbers I already know by heart. hear the dial tone tolling like a death bell.

"hello?" his voice sounds tinny and small over a distance of a hundred kilometers and a tangle of coiled wires, but it still does things to me, still makes me feel warm on the inside.

I breathe in. gather my thoughts. we need to talk rolls off my tongue.

and then I tell him what he's already known all along.

✧

I love you, he says to me.

say it again, I murmur against his throat.

so he pulls me down on top of him, his hands in my hair, and does exactly that.