foreign space - poetry&prose

joyrene ○ breakfast

"I didn't ask you to dance because you looked sorry at ballroom class in eighth grade." Joy says. I turn around and look at her.

"Sorry?"

She lets out something like a sigh, looking up at the ceiling. She opens her mouth and closes it. She's contemplating. And I wonder if what she says will change anything big.

I wonder if just a small sentence from her might change the way we held hands outside the theater, my hand in hers as she laughed at the absurdness of the big letters printed outside the building. "Reminds me of Ms. Hopkins' writing," she said. I only smiled. The way we kissed everywhere, at the bus stop, in my room, in her parents' car when they were out buying groceries and all I could think of was our thighs pressed next to each other, the warmth from hers seeping into mine. The way we first blushed when we looked at each other, after we'd read love poems to each other a day before and slept together on the bed.

She shifts on the bed and the springs squeak a little. "I asked you to dance," she starts slowly. "Because you were the new kid in school – you know that, but. Someone pointed you out at the lockers and started laughing because you couldn't figure your locker combination out. Then some guy came up to you and offered to help, and you smiled at him when he opened your locker for you. Then I saw that you had a copy of 1982, and I thought that was really cool. But you don't go up to someone and just ask if you can be friends because they're pretty cool. And I wanted to be your first friend. So when the chance came, I took it."

I think of all the chances I could've taken. It comes back to me now, in snippets of her voice and her texts. "If we're still..." I had listened to her voice trail off. "If you still want to come back, just give me a call. I'll still be here." You there? She had texted. I saw all of them, sucked in a breath whenever I heard her voice. I had tried so desperately to be away from her, and she had so desperately tried to reach me. She had haunted me, with my knees buckling and my eyes leaking tears as Seulgi ran up to me and frantically called my name. She always reminded me of what I left, what I could have stayed for.

It doesn't change anything, I conclude, but it does add a whole other layer to what we were.

But she is here now. She is here now, with the same raven hair and pink lips that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to. And instead of waiting for me to, she comes here to say hello. Comes to reconcile. Catch up.

She called someone, yesterday. In the bathroom. Said "I love you, too." She was laughing. She sounded happy.

I said that once, when she left for New York. I never found the need to say it before, because we were only teenagers who kissed at every movie screening and held hands under the blanket and always listened to Gramps' lectures and ate noodles together. I loved her before, I loved her then. I felt like I always would love her.

Now I don't know if anyone can take her place. I stay where I am, opposite of the room- and I let another opportunity pass.

She hadn't. She'd texted me, asked me: Remember Rocky Horror Picture Show? I hadn't replied, but I was fantasizing over all the various possibilities of doing so. It was the first time she'd kissed my cheek after the show. It was raining, and we were waiting on the sidewalk, a little dizzy after drinking the champagne we'd been offered. And her hand trailed up to my forearm, and up to my shoulder, until I stiffened and we both felt the anxiousness in the air. And she then decided to settle for that.

But I never replied, and she never texted me again.

I try to ask her a question, but the words get stuck in my throat. It's dry.

I contemplate not talking at all.

I swallow some saliva and open my mouth.

"The night you last texted me..."

The night is silent as she doesn't answer. I suppose she is asleep until she says, "I met someone."

Something cracks in my chest. It's not big. It's not loud- it's not like the other times I cried and Seulgi saved me with not asking questions and only helping me into the bathtub, filling the room with the scent of cinnamon and stroking my hair as she let the water run from the shower and washed away my tears with it. I don't need her right now. The crack is small because I knew it already. The crack is small because the room is already filled with Joy's cinnamon perfume. That someone else already loves.

I let her continue.

"His name is Sungjae. He liked me for a week, I think, and he was really cute too. Is. He asked me out. And everyone was telling me to say yes. But you hadn't."

I almost snort. "So you wanted my blessing or something?"

"No," she answers. Lets out another sigh again, this time slightly ragged, as if she's embarrassed. Or sad. "Anything from you, and I wouldn't have gone at all."

I don't know what to say. I don't know what to make of it. I don't know how it's possible for all these people to just move on- Wendy in NYU, Yeri moving to Chicago, Joy with Sungjae- and how I haven't even found the time for closure.

I've only started. Only started a month of a new friendship. Only started classes. Still thinking about Gramps and all the letters he kept from me, still thinking about decades of secrets, still thinking about how we used to laugh at the bonfire and how I used to put my arm around Joy's shoulders and press a kiss there. I've only started coexisting with the past and the present and only started learning how to not be torn by both.

I need more time. Please, I think. I'm sorry. I need more time.

"I hope you're happy together," I say. And I mean it- it comes with no regret or bitterness. I don't want to open Joy up to another possibility of feeling what it's like to have her lips on mine and her hands under my shirt, after Literature class when we were alone in the washroom stalls. I don't want to open myself up to that possibility either, when we go to Dunkin' Donuts and her knee bumps against mine. It's easier to coexist when neither of them bother you directly. I hope.

She says nothing, but I can already feel her smile. She always did.

"Thank you," she whispers.

I wake up a little earlier the next morning, and I make her breakfast.