Chapter Text
It is only a minute's walk from the Asian community to the mouth of the coast, where the wild bush rises in the highlands, stretching across all the edges and corners of the continent, receding behind the slender white sand and being reduced on the map to a dutiful perimeter. I slumped on his bed and listened to the vibrations of the waves creeping into the glass and the veil, the rustling and rolling sound retreating on the sand, the tide kissing and hugging and marching, resonating with the sound of the waves, but the carol yet had a stillness, loosely following the pulling force of the tide, becoming the carrier of the unchanging laws of eternity.
He loved to discuss life and meaning. He is full of a profound passion for psychology and self-analysis, and the inward deconstruction attitude makes me recoil, while I am always more willing to timidly project my eyes outward, observe the grand proposition of the universe nature, and avoid everything about myself. The concept of time and color is blurred in the room filled with the sound of waves, the cycle of the seasons is broken by the lonely land. He once took me to see a sea. Indeed, all the coastlines on Google Maps are the same, differentiated by the density of residential areas and a slight transition in vegetation color from green to dark green.
When I was still on the other side of the ocean, I had several phone calls with him. The cicadas chirped like the sea. I asked him what the weather was like there, and he said it was winter here. When the storm came, the sea was very loud.
Cicadas and oceans meet across the equator of the planet through electromagnetic waves.
The world is a vibration.
I straddled on top of him and waited for his hands to wrap around my waist. He thrusted into me to meet the ebb and flow of the tide. The so-called 7 inches embedded in my damp heat, and in a trancelike way I felt that he was kissing me, as if he had kissed a whole sea into my body.
He once accused me of living in a Third World shithole, which I neither confirmed nor denied. Acceptance of fate and a slight sense of resignation made me play it down as much as I could as a joke, but I was sure: these mountains were the most beautiful in the world. He said he wanted to release me in the mountains here, and that he would hunt me down. He knows I can't get away. I was described as a butterfly with soft wings. There're no vivid colors here. I think if I was a butterfly, I will have white silk wings, with no delicate sense of light, just lightly embellished into a large green background, nearly burned by the sun.
The mountains here are like the sea there. They both have the ability to strip away meaning, to fill you and me in a vacuum with enormous blocks of color that spread the field of vision, and I only remember how small I became, the rise and fall of the tides and the sway of the mountains as the world gasped. He said I was his, the affiliations were no longer certain, and we both seemed to be children of the sea and the mountains. I remembered his dark gray eyes, though he said the doctor had classified his irises as blue, while I had dark pupils. He said they looked a little light brown. No one's ever described my eyes that way before. In the sunlight, they reveal the clarity of amber.
Maybe he's right. Maybe we do match, blue-gray irises and light brown pupils. Are you kidding me? Let me come all the way to the other side of the earth, to live with you, to have your child, she will have beautiful eyes. I always find it funny that our relationship wobbles precariously, more fragile than a late autumn fall. However, I know that we are all safe and bold to dream without after-sales protection. I'm here for a brief respite, trapped in the diaphanous fantasy you've given me, enjoying the joy of the ephemera. Like a fine layer of sand and a curtain of surf closest to the tidal line, we try our best to kiss each other with each rise and fall. Maybe it wasn't touched. Maybe it was a touch.
I'm yours. The impulse made it so easy for him to express his desire to own me. He said I was like a beautiful painting. There are so many details in the painting that the young man loves it and wants to keep it. I admit my heart throbbed for a second. It's almost childish: I don't like to imagine people with you, I don't like you showing people the real you. I had tentatively asked what if in another world I were a good girl with a boyfriend, and then we were all blurry and clueless. He said I was too shy to confess my true sexual fantasies.
He said he was gonna put me in a cage, and he was gonna handcuff us together while we sleep.
I have tried to dissociate myself, why a few short words from him seem to have magic, my breath is as thin as the shackles of nothingness, but only he tells me the words can make my stomach wet and cramped and full of a million butterflies. I'm yours. I almost believed it, that you would make me a whore all to yourself, that you would make me a canary in a cage, that I would struggle and gasp and beg for your mercy. Maybe I'm out of my mind. Perhaps you will indeed devour me, strip me of my skin, bite my flesh, bring primordial fire into the waves between us, you are a lunatic, you are a tyrant... You are MY tyrant.
I like to sit on his lap while he works, hold his neck and bury my head in his shoulder socket. Enjoy sipping everything I need to breathe. I liked the way he ruffled my hair, the way he put his hand on my waist or my chest, the way he rubbed it carelessly. I thought of the way he said he wanted to buy a castle in Europe and live with his wife. I said, but first you need to have a lot of wealth. He replied that a few million euros was nothing. I curled my lips, amused, but hoping it wasn't a joke. Waiting is always a complicated proposition, and we are floating in a moral gray area together. He once told me how soft and delicate my skin looked.
I said why not find a whore in your Asian community?
The vibrations of the waves echo in my chest, pounding so hard that my whole body shivered a little from this terrifying force.
Because they're not you, he said.