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It is far too honest to live alone.
In the sky the other morning I had looked up and seen a group of birds moving as one—a persistent swarm, traipsing in the sky with the synchronicity of those familiar with freedom and flightness. The opposite of my earthbound state. I felt as though they were feeling things I have never felt, nor ever will. But I am here, aren’t I? I am here, my choices have led me here, and I am content with my walls and my roof and my doors.
It is a June afternoon when a small yellow car comes blundering up the driveway.
Sojiro is out of the passenger side faster than humanly possible. Goro blinks at the driver, and as she haphazardly puts the car into park, she sends him a breezy grin.
“First driving lesson out on the road. I totalled a Hyundai. Dad brought you lunch.”
Sojiro closes his eyes for a solid second.
“I also brought a lot of Tupperware. Where’s your freezer?”
The porch swing isn’t made for three people, and it can barely stand the weight of one, but with a steaming portion of curry in his lap and Futaba talking enough to out-talk the radio, Goro finds he doesn’t mind that much. Sojiro reaches behind Goro’s head to flick her on the temple.
“Shut up and eat your food,” he says, and then to Goro: “How’ve you been?”
“Redecorating,” Goro tells him.
“Need any help?”
“I’ve got it. You’re really going to teach Futaba how to drive?”
Futaba slaps her spoon against Goro’s hand. “Hey, you can’t even drive.”
“How do you get anywhere?” Sojiro asks, a renewed sort of worry in his tone. Goro’s elbow finds Futaba’s side.
“I get my things ordered in.”
The swing creaks, Sojiro vaguely pushing it with one foot. Over the porch railing, and out into the garden, there is an unnatural stillness.
“It’s quiet here,” Futaba says after a while. Her spoon scrapes her bowl.
“It is,” Sojiro agrees.
Detective Makoto Niijima finds him on a Wednesday afternoon as he’s trying to paint his porch blue. Her motorbike pulls up, stopping just shy of where Futaba failed to change gears. She lifts off her helmet and smiles with familiar unease. Goro squints at her, a hand lifted to block the sun, but he supposes it could pass as a wave. When she reaches the first step, she stops. Her coat is thick and leather, inappropriate for the weather.
“You’re a hard man to find,” she greets. Goro considers throwing his paintbrush at her for reasons he can’t pinpoint.
“Evidently not hard enough,” he replies. “Is there something I can help you with?”
She unzips her jacket and pulls out a file, holding it out in offering.
“I could use your help.”
Later he’ll be grateful that she found him today, at this moment in time, but right now he just juts a thumb at the paint roller he set aside earlier.
“Know how to paint?”
The porch remains unfinished for the day. Goro pours them half a soda each into wine glasses and it does not go unnoticed that blue fingerprints will dot each one. They cheers and sip slowly. Old inside jokes were gutted inside-out by future tense.
“The file’s empty,” she tells him.
“I looked at it while you were in the bathroom,” he replies. She smiles.
“I thought maybe I’d need a good excuse to visit you.”
“You don’t need an excuse.”
“I did.” She looked at Goro’s wrist with a certain disappointment. Her glass was tipping dangerously but before he could mention it, she set it down and sat back beside him.
“Has that helped any?” she asked.
“The cutting?” She nodded. “No.”
They sat for a silent minute, both contemplative in similar ways and drawing to similar conclusions, but both entirely unable to comprehend the other’s perspective. Later, Makoto would say it’s what made them decent friends.
Goro feels Makoto beside him, sees the heel and toe of her boot in his periphery as her leg shifts more comfortably over her thigh.
After a while, Makoto breathes a laugh and looks at him.
“What is it about Sunday’s?” she complains, and Goro has to laugh too.
“Dump as much fucking sugar as you want in your cereal.” Ryuji’s gestures are acerbic and loud, and as it turns out he is the owner of the totalled Hyundai. “Yell as loud as you want, whenever you want. What’s the point, otherwise?”
Even when the feeling is rough, he adds quietly. Even when all it comes down to is a little bit of luck.
Facing each other on Goro’s porch swing, all feet and legs and sweat and knees, all overlapping, Goro laughed loudly with his head bent down, Ryuji frantically bleaching strands of his hair and scrunching them in tinfoil from the roll between his legs, continuing to work even as his own tin-foiled head began to itch and the porch swing teetered dangerously to the right.
“Are you seeing a therapist?”
“No. No.”
Ann frowned. “Maybe you should.”
How could I explain it to her? I don’t want anyone to hear these things I say. I don’t want my thoughts to have agency.
Sometimes I catch myself doing strange things, and there’s this battlement in my mind of whether or not I consciously did the thing to draw attention to myself despite being alone. Is what I am so false that I have to be false to myself? How many of me are there, really?
“My grandmother’s guest bedroom had two mirrors either side of the bed,” I say to Ann then. “I used to sit in the middle of that bed and stare into the mirror closest to the door and it’d be like staring at a hundred of me.”
She held her hand around my wrist. Just held it.
When the sun had fully set, she squeezed.
“I feel that way too,” she replies. “But there’s just us here. Right now, there’s just us. And when I leave there’ll only be you.”
I know Ann loves me, because without even speaking I know we could recite each other entirely. This does not mean her words are worthless. Her words are beautiful and meticulous and, I must remind myself, meaningful. Nothing about Ann is to be taken lightly as that would be an insult to her entirety. I turn my hand over and link our fingers.
Have I always been on this search for beauty? I looked at myself, and the small group of people who I have come to call my friends, and as all people do I consider the past in order to ascertain the future, and I decide that yes, beauty is everywhere. Yes, I want it in all its forms. Yes, I will do anything to get it.
Yes, I am beautiful. With or without waiting for myself to bloom.
This, I joke to her later, this confounded realisation is the affect of Ann. She only smiles and tugs on a strand of my terribly dyed highlights.
With bare feet, we trailed around the garden as if it were monumental and not something worthlessly small. On the porch, Yusuke sat precariously on the railing with his feet outstretched and eyes closed. His sketch pad was empty on his lap, and Haru linked arms with me, suggested I start a vegetable garden.
I told her I preferred flowers, and she suggested perennials.
“You should start doing what used to make you happy. When you were a little.”
I tried to imagine the things I liked as a child, but nothing stuck out enough to pinpoint. I remember going through a phase of singing, and then drawing.
“I once plagarised Van Gogh’s sunflowers and my mother hung the painting in our lounge,” I said. Yusuke waves a nonchalant hand.
“They were your interpretation of his flowers. Regardless, I’m sure your piece was not a recognisable comparison.”
“Thank you?”
“You don’t sound that passionate about art,” Haru points out.
I wasn’t. Or maybe I was, but didn’t try hard enough. I wanted things quickly and easy when I adopted a hobby.
“I played guitar for six months and every time I filled out my training hours I lied,” I say.
“Deplorable.” Haru leans against me, arm long around my shoulders. “Tell me more.”
I took dance lessons for a year and loved it and gave up. I wrote and wrote for hours on end but the first story I ever wrote was another plagiarism of a story I barely remember having read.
“What’s yours?”
“Magic,” Haru replies confidently. “Yusuke has agreed to be my assistant.”
I laughed in surprise and Yusuke peers an eye open.
“You laugh now,” he says, “but I look sublime in pink sequins.”
“We’ll perform it for you,” Haru decides immediately, bounding up and sending the porch swing backwards. “I don’t have a rabbit on me but I can make-do with an aubergine.”
“Isn’t the point to make the rabbit appear?” Yusuke asks.
Bugs and dirt cling to both my fingers and the earth, and in-between that a worm the length of the loose thread on my sleeve tries to break free.
Where to begin? I am healing, in desperate terms. And what I mean by that is that I am not healing at all, but going backwards until I go backwards enough that I hit a wall, and am forced to only go on. I look at me and I see someone drawn to things which aren’t mine to have—this unattainable mixture of omniscience and fragile existence, of expanse, of the never-end. It’s that feeling you get when you look at the sky or the ocean on a clear day. That feeling has followed me my whole life. I am drawn to it like light.
I grab another clump of dirt and make room for the fern.
I promise you I am here. I am so very here, and I am so large that I fill the room. I am not thriving yet but I will thrive. I am not exciting yet but I want to excite. I promise you that things will begin to happen soon, just wait, just wait because I will be incredible.
Ren shows up in August. For his birthday.
Old rhetoric wouldn’t pull us together now. No more dancing around the subject, to hell with obfuscation—I missed and I wanted in equal and indefinite terms. I wanted him to sit with me and tell me how he brushed his teeth. I wanted him to ask how I learned to tie my shoes.
He lingers on the stairs up to my home and smiles, unsure if he is welcome. I open the door wide.
Start here.