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Id cut my soul into a million different pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home.
.I’d write love poems to the parts of yourself you can’t stand
.I’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you I’m not afraid of your dark
- Andrea Gibson
this is how it’s going
Minhao walks on the same soil his father and grandfather did, and the ones before them too, with a steady pace and head held high. He knows where he’s going, always seems to, even when the two of them are out, looking for adventures. Maybe, Mingyu wonders, it comes with the familiarity of having walked these paths and crossed these bridges since he was born, being destined to do so, really.
Minghao knows every stone and every branch and every bird that inhabits the forest. He talks with them, early in the morning when the first rays of sunshine are welcomed into their home by open windows and a slight breeze creates ripples in their curtains, and at night when dusk falls and he whistles them goodnight, getting in return a song sang just for him, and eventually, for Mingyu too.
He struts around in their little town like it’s his , and in a way it is. Because the ease with which he picks flowers and haggles with the merchants and paddles in the fountain at the town’s square, people fondly watching him, is something one can only possess with roots anchored deep into the ground of this place, with the knowledge that it has grown and formed alongside you, for you . That it molded itself around you, made to fit you as good as possible.
Mingyu follows him around and gets introduced to the kids that are always hanging around the small town hall and the librarian that shows him pictures of Minghao as a baby - sitting in a field, an aura just as bright back then as now - and the old lady in the middle of the woods that they buy mushrooms and forest fruit from. Mingyu is quite sure she’s a witch, with a spark in her eyes and a cat curling around her feet and tea already made, steaming hot, whenever they decide to come over.
But in this little town in the middle of the valley, surrounded by mountains and woodlands and all the beauty mother nature has to offer, nothing like that matters.
(...)
They spend the summer together like they always do, being awakened by rays of gold coming through their windows, falling upon their crumpled sheets and the pretty arch of Minghao’s back. They get up, or maybe they don’t, too wrapped up in each other. They make breakfast and they feed each other peaches and pieces of mango, and Minghao draws shapes and curly lines onto the back of his neck, grips at the baby hairs there teasingly until he gets distracted by a strawberry held to his lips.
They go out on bike rides, with old, colourful, rusty bikes that do the job until they don’t anymore and the two of them decide to leave them behind at the side of the road somewhere, laid to rest until they come to pick them back up, hours, days later. They hike up hills, just to roll down again, the smell of fresh grass and flowers in the air, bees zooming around their heads. One time, they find a beehive and cut away a honeycomb, and when they kiss, mouths sticky, Mingyu wonders how Minghao could possibly taste even sweeter.
Sometimes they pack their backpacks and grab their walking sticks and move into the mountains for a few days. They take the town’s dogs with them, a flurry of two boys and five dogs, running around and barking and giggling, living life to the fullest. They watch as the large dogs chase the butterflies, make friends with the wild horses and splash through muddy puddles. Maybe this is how life is supposed to be, Mingyu thinks, as he holds on tight to one of the smaller dogs, who had found safety in his neck as they travel through a ravine, climbing over rocks strewn around as if they were pebbles, the sounds of cowbells resonating above their heads.
They look around for mountain streams, the rippling of a creek, traces of animal prints leading them towards hidden treasures, water fresher and sweeter than anywhere else. They stay there for a while, letting their feet sink into the rill, silver and goldfish shooting in between their toes like shooting stars. You won’t find anything like this anywhere else, Minghao tells him, petting the fur of Mingyu’s favorite dog - small, brown fur and a wet nose and so much love to give, just like the boy whose lap he’s sitting on. He can’t help but agree.
In the evening, they find shelter in one of the mountain cabins scattered around the forests and summits. They are empty, rough, a cloud of dust forming as soon as the two step foot inside, but it’s nice, cozy, and they manage to make it into a home every time again. They start a fire and they cook and they play with dogs and kiss and breathe in the same air, and every single day is so so wonderful and at times, Mingyu doesn’t want to go to sleep, doesn’t want the days to end, but then there is a whisper in his ear and a hand stroking his hair, telling him that tomorrow will be just as nice, maybe even better.
Then they come back home after their adventures, the town welcoming them back with warm hugs and sweet words and big smiles, and everything is the same way it was when they left, papers strewn across the kitchen table and a half-full cup of coffee and the birds singing them a new song they learned. Everything is still as perfect as it used to be, and Mingyu never wants to leave.
There are meadows of flowers everywhere, and they go pick them every day, early in the morning when they just start to fold open and reveal the beauty they hide away during the fresh night, dewdrops falling down the rosy petals. They pair together the prettiest colors and shapes and combinations to give each other, the house filling up with wonderful fragrances and a token of their love.
Because there is so, so much love, everywhere around them, overwhelming at times. He wonders if maybe this is how life is supposed to be.
(...)
When he wakes up in the middle of the night, for no other reason than to be awake, living, conscious at a time that feels truly like his only, Mingyu slides from in between the heat and softness of their sheets and Minghao’s puffs of breath, untangles their legs and leaves with a caress to his lover’s cheek.
He goes outside with a cup of herbal tea and his notebook, picking up one of the cats roaming around in their living room and carrying them with him, along with a soft blanket, placing him on his lap gingerly. Sits under a tree and looks up at the stars and lets himself feel.
There are constellations in the sky, speckles littered across dark ink, reminding him of the birthmarks on the small of Minghao’s back and the twinkle residing in his eyes for all eternity. He opens his notebook, let’s his thoughts flow, empties his heart.
He writes about soft lips and a half-smirk and scrawny legs. About a laugh trickling through the forest and sunshine in human form. He writes about forehead kisses and deep conversations and a hand that fits perfectly in his.
The dark blue ink flows on the page, leaves stains sometimes, but it doesn’t matter. He sings, voice rough but full of emotion and feelings blending with the sounds of crickets and he wants to say so much but he doesn’t know how, doesn’t know if he’ll ever have the chance, so instead he writes.
Love letters, love letters. A love letter to the world, to his world.
(...)
Minghao looks at people the same way he looks at the sunrise the same way he looks at the mountains the same way he looks at the old man on the corner of the street, with an open heart and mind and soul.
He is loving and thoughtful and happy, sun-soaked and dripping with honey and crinkled eyes and blown kisses. He is passionate about poetry and nature and about people, believes in the little things and the goodness of every person, with an honesty so overwhelming it physically pains Mingyu at times.
He goes through life looking at the sky and the sunsets and dawn and the moon, ready to conquer the world both day by day and all at once, a mix of tragedy and hope and comfort, everything and all at once, moving forward with an ease that is admirable, if not unbearable to look at.
There are scars and freckles and birthmarks and bruises, proof that he’s lived and grown and learned, and Mingyu can’t help but love every inch and nook of him, presses kisses to the darkened pieces of skin and the blueish marks that will never disappear, bringing with them memories of people met and places been and dreams lived.
His body exists out of flowing water and stardust and the same atoms that have once made up Plato and Mozart and every Greek God, and his mind; his mind is the most gorgeous of all.
Deep thoughts and well-thought out answers and late night conversations about the strength a lioness possesses being her biggest weakness and the beauty there is to find in shards of broken glass. How love can be overwhelming and powerful and too much and everything at once, both stifling and never enough.
Every word he speaks is one that should be written down, but he doesn’t, because there is a power in allowing them to disappear with you, to stand strong enough in this world to know that what you say matters even if there is never any physical evidence of it. It’s enough to have been heard by just the two of them.
Mingyu falls in love with him, every day, over and over again.
(...)
Mingyu comes and then he has to leave again and he cries every single time, bidding goodbye to the squirrels in the large oak tree next to the house and the sweet auntie that always gives him peaches that he bites into, savouring the taste of earth and love and this , juice dripping down his chin, leaving behind a trail of sweetness that Minghao will lick off again, later in the afternoon when they settle in their garden and look at the clouds. There’s a promise of return on his lips, there always is, a tremor in his voice when he asks them to wait for his return, as they always do. To take care of Minghao. They listen.
He says goodbye to Minghao, too, and it breaks his heart over and over again to see his eyes casting down and his shoulders cowering just a little. He pulls him close and tells him that it’ll be okay, that he’ll come back, that he loves him. He pleads to him to hold on and to wait for him and to be careful with his heart, because, Minhao, you’re cradling all of its delicate beauty in your hands. It’s yours. Minghao nods so fervently that he can’t help but to believe him, and the kiss they share is passionate and salty from their tears.
And so Mingyu leaves and he longs, yearns, for that little town and his beautiful boy, and he counts the days until he can go back to where he really belongs.
this is how it started
Mingyu met Minghao when they were both seventeen and lost and also the complete opposite of each other. Mingyu had his life planned out in front of him by other people, knew what he had to do in order to achieve success and make those around him happy. Knew not to step out of line. It hurt and it would hurt even more in the years that followed, but he kept telling himself he was okay.
Minghao was barefoot and held dried flowers in his hand with a smile so bright it would’ve hurt to look at, had Mingyu not totally, head-over-heels fallen in love with him the moment he saw him standing there on the middle of a crossroad, looking so out of place with his flowing shirt and his long hair, but so sure of himself at the same time.
He doesn’t know why, because he has always learned he’s not supposed to talk to strangers and in all honesty he’s a little scared of people in general, but this boy just radiates familiarity in a way that makes him ache, so he approached him and talked to him and slowly made his way into the other’s life.
Mingyu is the beach; broad and stoic, covering up the footsteps that come by moments after, lifeless and so full of a certain sort of restlessness at the same time. Minghao is the waves that everyone admires, slowly making his way through life in a way that doesn’t hurt others, so sure of himself. They meet, and it’s everything.
Minghao is a campfire late at night in the middle of summer, little bits of wood and broken dreams catching fire and returning to the earth as nothing but ashes, sparks that fly up into the air and leave behind a trail of hopefulness. Mingyu is that same air, the dark night sky, cold in a way it shouldn’t be in the middle of August, letting himself warm up to the fire, gravitating towards it, surrounding it to keep it safe. To keep him safe.
They clicked together like puzzle pieces.
-
Minghao had been restless, searching, for as long as Mingyu had known him, but the moment he came home, it died down. No more pacing around, gaze fleeting , looking for something, somewhere . Instead, his being became more serene, gracious, in a way Mingyu had yet to have experienced. It was beautiful to see the tense line of his shoulders come down, to see the furrow of his brow relax until he was languid, like putty in the hands of a higher spirit, trusting himself, his surroundings, life.
And he gets it, really. Because he gets to know that little town in the mountains and he loves it, adores it, cherishes it as much as he cherishes its inhabitants and the nature surrounding it and the boy living there.
It hurts to know, at times, that Minghao has all of that and had grown up so loved and comfortable and free, and that he had to endure noise and the bustling streets and screaming parents since he was young. It’s not his fault, and had Minghao not been everything he was, Mingyu probably would’ve hated him for it. But as it is now, he just wraps him up in his arms even tighter and kisses the crown of his hair and silently begs him to please let me stay i need this i need you . He never says it out loud. He doesn’t have to. Minghao seems to know, anyways.
And then school starts and he leaves to go back to the city he had gotten to hate so much, and the whole year he thinks about nothing but math equations and grades and, late at night when the numbers are dancing in front of his eyes, his boy in that town in the mountains a whole world away.
But he goes back, and has to leave again, and again, and at some point, when he’s crying on the train ride back to school, he wonders how much more it’ll take until he breaks and quits and shatters all of his parents’ dreams for grassy hills and goats and campfires.
(...)
Life gets a little bit better, eventually. Mingyu graduates from college with the highest distinction, his parents in the front row when he receives his degree. His mom cries and his dad pats him on the back and tells him how good of a son he is. Mingyu can only think about petal lips and rough hands and a smile like honey. He looks around, over people’s heads, ignoring his father rambling on and on about honor and the Kim's family name.
Then, in the back of the room, he sees tousled hair and an oversized shirt - it’s his, realizes later on, when he gets to take it off - paired with a crinkled eye-smile that was so loving Mingyu could feel it in his chest. He was here, had traveled miles and hours despite hating the city and everything about it, and Mingyu was so enamored it hurt.
That year, they stay together for almost six months, and when he leaves again (because he has a job his parents told him to apply for, because he’s an adult, because life isn’t fair for people like him) he makes a promise to himself to return soon, forever.
this is how it ends
Every night he comes home, exhausted from having to interact with people all day and concentrate and listen to complaints that have nothing to do with him , and overwhelmed from all the sounds and smells and people, so different from that little town in the valley, where he belongs, where he wants to belong.
He gets home and his apartment is cold, and quiet, airy , and the person he needs the most, longs for every moment of his life, isn’t there and Mingyu doesn’t know how much longer he can do this.
He writes more love letters, curled up on the couch, listening to the traditional Chinese songs Minghao would sing late at night when they found shelter in a cabin, voice clear and echoing between mountain tops and into the valley.
“You hear that?”, people would ask each other. That’s our Minghao. He’s still here with us, telling us to get home safely and be with the people we love, just like he did.
He buys the most colourful flowers from one of the little stalls down the street, with an old eomma that looks at him with a mix of admiration and fondness, picking out the most beautiful roses and sunflowers just for him, as he slowly fills his house with them. He buys herbs and tries to replicate the same tea Minghao made him every night, almost unable to fall asleep without them, wishing for it to warm him up enough to feel something again.
It’s not enough. The flowers wilt faster than what he’s used to, and they smell too much, their fragrance overwhelming in a way he comes to loathe. He just can’t seem to get that balance of honey and spice and bitterness right, not like Minghao did so effortlessly, and his creations end up being poured down the sink, leaving a bad taste in his mouth.
He writes letters and poems and raps about love sickness and longing and missing a piece of himself, and then he puts it all into an envelope and glues it close, writes an all-too-familiar address onto it and lets it go with a kiss to the hard brown paper and tears in his eyes.
He leaves long voicemail messages to a phone number he knows isn’t really used, because the owner of it charges his phone once every three months when he finds it back into one of the couch cushions or in a cabin he’d left it during his prior stay. There is never an answer, but that’s okay because it’s enough to get those thoughts of his chest, to know that at least on the other side of the call there is a person waiting for him.
His heart aches and it breaks and he’s so tired of this, of seemingly having to fight in order to keep his place here in the city. It’s never enough and he needs to keep going even when he feels like he can’t and this can’t be what life’s supposed to be like, right? He refuses to believe that, not when there’s a beautiful boy and a life waiting for him somewhere else, if only he had the strength to go through with it.
(...)
And then he has.
One evening, after a particularly bad day at work filled with nothing but sheets piling up onto his desk and his boss yelling at him for something he didn’t do and hearing people gossip about each other, he slams his door close and grabs his laptop from the coffee table and sends in his resignation. And then he contacts his landlord and breaks the contract and sells every single piece of sleek furniture his parents bought for him, and packs two bags and a backpack and buys a one-way train ticket to the little town in the valley.
He leaves the city two days later and doesn’t look back, not even once.
(...)
On a day in early spring, early in the morning when the dew is still collecting on the petals and the birds are only just starting to wake up, there is a knock on the wooden door of a small cottage, strong and decisive, sure of itself. Then, there is some shuffling, a surprised cry, mumbling. If you listen close enough, you can hear a whispered i came back.
Later, much much later, one of the town’s people would walk by and see two boys, entangled, unaware of anything but each other. They love each other, he told everyone gathered around the town’s square. They love each other like the trees love the water and the birds love the air. They need each other in order to really live.
And everyone would nod, hum approvingly, because they knew their boy and they knew that nice boy from the city, and how they made each other so happy, and so they went home and told their kids about the kind of love that is scarce, and beautiful, and everything this world is made out of.
Yeah, those two boys, there was something special about them. Their love was the forever kind of love.
(...)
On the table - on their table - lays a brown envelope filled to the brim with notebook papers, sonnets about love and aching and hurt and declarations of spending life together, always and forever, and a phone with a dead battery that hasn’t been opened in months, but holds a tear-drenched voice and promises of return, asking to hold on just a bit longer.
They don’t matter anymore, will be forgotten with the time when Mingyu loses his phone and decides not to buy a new one or when they need fuel for a backyard fire and grab the first papers they see on their way in. None of it matters.
Here, in this place and world and lifetime, only Minhao does.