SEA OF FACES (Preview)

恋

KOI

I.

                               I wake up as a goldfish in his bathtub, the last morning of a fortnight, vision yolk-murky as he sleeps next to me with his eyes strained open,

                             hands ribboned around a carcass that has drowned one too many times, all bloody from the promises he can no longer stuff into his back pockets —

and it reeks;

his half open briefcase left on the entrance,

                spilling two faces I don't recognize.

         It bruises,

the tooth he grips in his palm, the amulet — searing, spat out and left on the sidewalk from all the times he was just a man. A head in the crowd. A name. A story untold chafed around the spine — the blur of legs that couldn't keep up with the world, with society's greedy mouth. A thousand hands, pulling at the skin that serve as a tablecloth to present the feast — more than he can offer, more than rough fingers that shake around each tap of the same greased up sticky keys,

                            more than the screams muffled under the cotton of his childhood duvet — takes everything he once thought he could be, the romanticized version of the truth, of fate; the concrete dismal, unforgiving — have we forgiven ourselves for the version of us we can no longer be?

II.

It spills,

the still-wet remains of last night's affair discarded in his trash can; when I choked inside the stall of a train station toilet and he didn't say a thing, tongue heavy, a choked up confession, the masks we wore before on the very pit, soiled with questions we still don't have the heart to answer.

The excuse tastes metallic on the edge of my mouth, peeling off skin to reveal a core I can no longer look straight in between the eyes. The seeds have began to take root, somewhere under the carpet, under his shoes that know where he's been.

I hold his hand because that's all I know,

(that's all I've ever been taught to do when a man cries).

III.

My hands are stained. Red from the bathtub he refuses to drain, from the remains of who he was before that Sunday morning – wrung clean and tasting of izakaya smoke that found a home under his clothes.

                                  When he wakes up, there's a lie masked as a kiss on the corner of my mouth,

               all too nice,

                                     bleached hair dyed red that stain the bland yellow of his bathroom tiles; a dirty shade I can't erase. An unforgiving color I can only replace with a darker shade that burns and spills over where I've rubbed enough to tear.

I cut the cord, of the phone, of a string the shade of his hair, the moment he proclaims he has learned to love enough —

— that he can sacrifice himself at the thought of me.

IV.

He tells me he doesn't own a blade, but I've started to wonder —

                                    why the saltwater has began to sting whenever he'd drag me into the sea —