Content warning:
Bodily harm, blood, unhealthy relationships
My writing explores the darkness within myself and my past. In this case, I wanted to write about a frighteningly unhealthy relationship. I hope readers experience the uncomfortableness the narrator feels for participating in something profane and yet falling head-first into it.
The sun collapses from the sky like it saw our souls and fled.
Late summer collides with thick nightfall. We drive in silence to bask in the darkness. Tell me, why are we obsessed with opacity, love? We only breathe easy when things are hard.
I need to see our webbing.
You pull over into the overlook parking lot. The city sparkles with hope—the naive kind. Dots of blissful blue and pride-less red dance across the valley. Never have I seen something I wanted to gently destroy more until I turn and look at you.
Lips stretch to comfort me; yours, even though our mutual aversion to comfort is what keeps our worlds from anemic slumber.
I don’t smile back at you.
“Are you ready?” Your voice is like brown sugar, the forced side of sweet.
You need to see our webbing.
The door handle is damp with stubborn humidity. I nearly slip as I push it open, sucking in dense August air. Sycamore clings to my throat like a soggy turtleneck. But—and I mean this—there is nothing I wouldn’t do to be with you, to demolish you.
Hand in hand, we walk up to the short wooden fence. It scrapes my thigh as we climb over it. Insects croon a blues song. Feet away, there’s a clearing. Do Not Sit says the sign, and I roll my eyes. You take off your backpack, choke my wrists, kiss me. Thank goodness for the lies bandaging our bodies together in false intimacy.
You press the tip of your tongue/revolver against the softest part of my neck and tell me I smell like deadened smoke: subtle enough not to choke you, but cruel enough to want to. My smile is full, nearly overflowing with unease.
Your insults have gotten kinder.
The moon is naked. She hangs in the sky, careless despite her illogical position. Perhaps careless because of her illogical position.
I, too, wish to be suspended in air, held up only by the good intentions of gravity.
So do you. I see it in your dark eyes. They glitter with a wrench of sadness like the stars above us—ahead of their time.
You yank out my sewing kit.
I was once chastised for calling it “our” sewing kit. You said it was insulting and presumptuous of me, even though we bought this thing together.
The kit is wrapped in stock paper we wept on. It’s wrinkly, but thick and infested with thorns from the bushes outside your bedroom window. My palms are pricked as I unwrap it, and the blood slides down and sinks into the paper.
It belongs there.
Beneath us, the ground is warm as we cross our legs. The choir of crickets serenades our evening of tender injuries. I pull out the needle. You pull out the thread.
“This is too lovely,” you sing, staring at the thread. Your voice drifts in a flimsy, lifeless flutter. I grimace when I realize your rhythm is on the downbeat of the insects’. The sound swings upward and pirouettes downward before righting itself again. “Lovely, lovely, and so, so broken.”
The thread is the darkest shade of brown, a whisper above total blackness. Like my skin. Like yours.
We crush our mutilated palms together and breathe. Our eyes watch each other’s chest, envious of the air inside our lungs because we’ll never be able to accomplish something as invasive as that. Something as inescapable as that.
But we can try.
We need to see our webbing.
My breathing doesn’t change when I pierce my skin with the needle. Not too far down, but deep enough that it won’t fall out the second I move. I hand the thin slice of metal to you and watch as you impale yourself.
Your breathing doesn’t change either.
We move with a fluidity only achieved with repetition over time. Back and forth. In and out. Pierce and pass.
The thread winds up the outside edge of our palms, from our wrists to the tips of our pinky fingers. You double-knot the thread when we finish, ensuring we’ve captured each other. I take the miniature pair of scissors and sever our thread from the thread in the kit.
We shift to see the thread better, craning our necks to see the closest we’ll ever get to being One. The webbing of our own making. The webbing soaking in our blood and shining in the moonlight. You’re right—this is lovely.
And yes, broken.
