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If you are paying attention, you know that this is not a story about violence. Please ignore the blood. Or rather, see the blood for the necessary, grisly devotion that it is, and do not think too much about it. We don’t have the time, alright? Focus.
She has blood under her nails. Gideon’s, of course. Always Gideon’s. Out of all of the rituals of their childhood that she clings too—the prayer bones, the certain vibrations of devotionals in her throat, the way her knees ache in an acutely particular way from kneeling in cold subjection—this is the one she doesn’t find God in. She doesn’t think to look. But it’s divine all the same. The body remembers the feeling, even when another soul is riding it, even when she’s far away down the River. This body will always remember the feeling of Gideon Nav’s flesh under her nails, of hot blood on her cheek, of the strange sting of saltwater.
It’s romantic, of course. This is a love story, among other things.
I didn’t know what that felt like, before. But the body did. She knows, even if I don’t think she’s ever really said it out loud. Silly little thing.
(Here, you stop and look at me and I can see the blood on your cheek, on your teeth, crusted dark crescents under your nails. You want me to stop talking, because you know what I’m going to say and you aren’t going to like it. Sorry. We’re both in the story, too.)
This isn’t a story with a happy ending, but I think maybe it could be a kind one.
You actually stand up and walk away. I watch you pace back and forth, breath misting out in the air with each sharp exhale. Gideon never did that—the breathing to think, the rhythm of air in your lungs like a current--that’s all you. Still, it suits his body somehow, now. Maybe because it’s you doing it.
“Kiddie,” you say finally, the name you gave the girl in the body with the blood under her nails. It still fits; it still sounds like a shape that can make sense of me, even now. “I don’t know if I want the ending you do.”
The scream is so hot in my chest it hurts, but I have been holding molten things at my core for longer than you’ve been alive. “Pyrrha,” I say, and this body, this ugly thing, makes your name a howl. “You’re not listening.”
You’re not understanding me. You’re not listening to the story.
You crouch down in front of me, pull me into your arms like I’m her, like I’m in a breaking body with divine blood under her nails, and I let you. I let you. I let you. I let you hold me so I can keep the scream in and because—
Well.
You’re not listening anyway.
“I still love you,” you say. I can feel your breaths, sharp, hot, hissing on my cheek. You taste of meat and not salt. I bite your cheek to make sure we’re both real, and you don’t even flinch. That’s devotion too. Not the kind John thinks he deserves. Something else. Mine.
(You’ve always understood divine things as other and abstract, but you’re just as devout as the nun, Pyrrha. Your divine is Gideon’s heart, Gideon’s lungs, the crust of nicotine on your tongue. You reek of want and desire and loneliness. Your divine is a woman with gunpowder on her knuckles and fire in her eyes. Your divine has always been burning. That’s why you’ve always loved me. That’s why you understand.)
There’s so much violence here. Us breathing is violence. The scream is so hot in its cage. My ribs hurt. The body hurts. It’s too small to hold the weight of me. Violence is not the story. The story is the scream. Trapped. Lonely. Lovely. Beautiful.
Your blood is in my mouth, an echo of salt. I let it sit on my tongue to taste it longer.