d. fyodor x reader x o.dazai | You had been destined to die from the beginning. Through you does she slip, like sunlight through a sieve, settling onto the ruins of future human relationships, thereby destroying any chance of existence. Dead before...
trigger warnings: mentions of suicide by hanging. —
"WE CANNOT RELIVE THE PAST."
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Mom was a lovely person.
And you were not speaking from the perspective of an abused child—no, you were speaking from the bottom of your heart; from the joyous surge of blood that passed through its valves whenever your mouth uttered her title; from the hum beyond the ribs, resembling a growl, or like a voice from deep underground, where blood was pushing through bouts of unbearable agony: a word, a word,
a word.
(Or was it because she was manually squeezing it with her clawed hand as if it was a vintage perfume squeeze bulb?)
Was mom religious? God, you couldn't even tell. The passing thought only seemed to amplify your pain—how she had hated the life she lived, turning her back to Him from the intolerable despair that welled like tears in her chest, overflowing, crushing, breaking; all expelled through a singular, hiccupped breath when the noose tightened.
The ceiling fan above thrums. The rain had stopped. Skim milk skies turned into an ocean of diluted blood: the crimson room, therefore, lit up, lapping at the walls and staining the white sheets an orange hue.
The cicadas ceased their searing, relentless cries when evening befell them.
You opened your eyes.
What did you know about mom?
You rummage through the drawers by the bed. There was a spare leather-bound bible in one. Perhaps you would look through it one day. There was a stack of paper at the bottom one; though random forms and receipts and rubbish and whatnot, you still flipped them over on the blank side and clicked at a ballpoint pen on the nightstand. The end had been chewed and writing with it felt like pulling a needle through half-done cement.
But would writing it down be like collecting fragments of a cracked urn? Putting it together, glueing it; even kintsugi seemed sacrilegious—mono no aware? A compassionate sensitivity to what? The poignancy and aesthetic of what? Identification with what? To make a reconstruction of your elusive mom would be as successful as capturing a shadow with a net. Nevertheless, as you jotted down random phrases and dates, collecting memories from the pockets of miasma in your head; but this in itself must have borne as much relation as a photo of a tiny hill would to the great, ancient mountains of South Africa. It was realism that you were after: but you knew that the bleak, dusty reality had been damaged with the faithful image of Mother, hung on an imaginary cross with a nail embedded in her jugular.
