Prose by Manelle Aruta

Edited by Sam Beknazarova

0.

You tell her bad things come in six. Call it a transitive property.

1.

Here are the remnants of the truth that she neglected to tell you: at the center of the universe is a black hole. The black hole is lonely and wields a sharp smile that pulsates to the core of every thunderous beat of her heart. It will invite you out for tea and stab your throat, sequentially, like checking off a list. Standard, except she never told you the black hole wears her skin. How were you supposed to know, when the same knife dangles eagerly from its fingertips? You memorized the curves of her wrist in the sullen gloam and now you are the one who pays for it. But you digress.

You close your eyes.

This is how it starts. You would like to say this is how it ends. But no, not yet.

2.

When you stand in the bathroom, it is early morning and she hasn’t lost any blood yet, or she has and the black hole is lying to you. You catch the fluorescent lights in your teeth and glance out the door someone left half-open to the sunlight creeping along the floor. Who left it open? you ask the light. The light doesn’t respond, and extends a ghastly hand of sulking veins and rotting hopes. This, too, is her; don’t lie, and don’t look away.

You look at your reflection until it becomes a stranger, and this truth is yours until the light draws them out of your clavicle and traces your jaw. Taste the desperation in your mouth before the black hole does. Memorize the blurred edges of your face in case the world rearranges itself tomorrow morning. Swallow the words, teeth and all, before it gets to.

You close your eyes.

When you stand in her bathroom, it is three years before the calamity and she thinks you hold her heart between your fingertips. She never told you this, but she stopped asking for it back because you folded one of the corners like a bookmark, and it is too creased to fix but she watches you try, and just barely refrains from calling you the Fool. Rather, she colors meaningless phrases in the air and weaves them into devotion, but.

The devotion is for the shapes in the corner you cannot see and she refuses to look at you.

If she’d just look at you.

You’d tell her it’s alright, reach toward her neck, dig out her carotid artery in self defense—but at least you’d be honest about it. If she’d just look at you, you could give her the truth. But she is feeding deception and frost sneaks in through the windowsill. Her fingerprints, on the walls and in the snow outside, shape something vaguely monstrous.

Will it eat her alive? Will it take you by the hand and waltz with you towards a place neither of you can come back from? Answer me while I’m still pulling on my jacket, you demand, while we’re both still here to toss our dreams at our feet.

3.

You told her once, right? Just like this: you never tell me anything.

But that isn’t entirely true. She is the quietest person you’ve ever known before the world, and by extension, she razed the most violent brand of excitement to the ground. No one believes you, though. You tiptoe around the lawn and try to find a mirror, but it seems like you’ve lost it.

(Splintering into the atmosphere, there’s a piece of sky, and the world, and all the impossibilities trailing into your arms and carving out a black hole. Reality—your reality—then what is this?—rises and caves and shatters like the bathroom mirror, the earth digging into the soles of your feet, the pieces falling through your fingers. The chords, scattering in the air like a supernova, quiet in the implosion. The chords, fading away, resonating. Somewhere, you can piece together a goodbye, a goodbye, a goodbye and the black hole spins into itself, creating its own sort of universe. The world, too big, too small in the palm of your hands, the heartlines that lead nowhere. The universe, cupping a home that no longer exists. The world, on repeat, too quiet. A goodbye, goodbye.

Wake up.)

The empty chandelier and the spectrum of colors oscillating on the floor. She always looked lovely when she put on the ruby dress, the one with the pockets and the silver stuck in her throat. Where is your mirror, love? she tended to ask, allowing cruel hope to run through your bloodstream. Was that mark near the corner of your mouth always there?

We are one year before the calamity. Chin up, now.

(Wake up.)

4. 

The sky is full of water droplets hanging in midair. They linger just above her sternum and the ground is dry, but the rain slams down. What is the truth? She tells you she knows the answer and pushes you closer to the center of the universe; you interpret this as her love in small, meaningless spirals. The sunlight is hiding and she is yearning and you want to dig your nails into the world and tear it apart, start it over with a kinder foundation, except the world has collapsed into your eyes fixated on the corner and you can’t reach. Come here, she’s calling. Just for a little while. Let us learn together how it feels to bleed into the shimmering carpet.

She dreamt you up a garden and spent the next three hours plucking out every single petal with your favorite color. You watched as she did it, speechless, staring, still, as the sunlight hid and her heart emerged. Her heart, a gaping maw; her heart a rotten, teething thing. When you go downstairs, there are bony petals scattered like mud across the ground, leading to the front door. What a beautiful display, she says.

The truth neither of you can face, not properly, not without the shadows at your heels threatening to become home: you made me worse. You made me worse.

5.

Here is the truth you peel away from the bone marrow and the decaying smile on her face: the black hole is her. The black hole is not her. The black hole is stitched together by something others would call love, and it lives in her skin.

She opens her eyes. Makes a cup of coffee in a city you will never know the name of, traces blood and sweat and tears into walls you will never see. You could craft a house out of everything you know of her and it will not stand the test of time, but at least it would stand. You could design it, unpack your favorite things into dusty corners, drink ginger tea where she used to stand, but she will have seen it all and you will be left here, wanting.

Here is the end, in the oscillating lights and the world falling apart at your feet. The end is dedicated to her, regrettably. Had she taken you by the hand, you would have liked to rebuild your bedroom, at least. Call it hers. Let the black hole have you, but with what you both deem love.  Pull her in your arms and tuck away your spine, at last show your back to one you know will not stab you. But you’re standing in a memory of a memory, letting a ghastly hand wrap itself around your vocal cords, the wisps of her that you have left drawing the black hole close. And there are no more words to be said.

6.

You shake your head and step away from her hold. The twinkling of bell chimes float past you, a memory.

(Truth, scattering like the glass shards you were supposed to pick up, scattering like the chords, the fading of a song, a promise left senselessly, recklessly. It slides gently down your spine, urges you to go. Goodbye, farewell on dust and dried blood, a tear hangs in the detonation.)

The ghosts you carry with you and the ghosts that linger are not always the same thing. One of these, you can choose. So choose.

???.

You open your eyes.