self-loathing sits in every midnight lock on her head, in the corner of every wide, crooked grin and in the back of her soju burnt mouth, coating her tongue and teeth like resin.
self-loathing has her parked in the bathtub, throat burning and jaw aching. it has her cheeks painted sea salt, her palms decorated with waxing red crescents.
self-loathing takes the name yoshida sayo and leaves her a quivering, aching mess that doesn’t deserve the strong strokes of her name, but something smaller and more pathetic, like “surrender” or “defeat.” it leaves her expanding and deflating like a punctured balloon still trying to retain its shape , but only for the sake of show.
then the thunder rolls in.
she knew it was coming -- her knees and neck and back -- parts all traitorous, but truthful -- had been whispering of grey gauntlets snatching the sun out of the sky since noon, which is why she had chose to drown in ethanol aethers in the first place (because she was scared, scared). but the first crack is always a surprise, always the cool press of a knife against her neck, just that quick.
bleary eyes squeeze themselves shut, trying to find rhyme and reason in the storm’s angry tarantella. she casts the sonic booms as a man in black, with heavy combat boots, angry, always angry. he rips open her chest and crashes through its doors, and his sister rain comes running in, trickling down her throat and back with cold, cold fingers.
when they were six, sen told her playing pretend made even the bad things a little better, but all she wants to do now is throw up.
sen. her body hurt for the without of him, it hurt for the with. yet no one had ever said medicine was supposed to go down easy -- it was always supposed to be clenched teeth and sweating palms, wasn’t it?
slowly, desperately, she drags herself out of her porcelain tomb, not bothering to tug a jacket over her shorts and t-shirt (no matter what, the cold would find her anyway). pulling on a pair of birkenstocks, she trudges down the stairs (not the elevator, a glutton for punishment), then wandering around the dreary block of their apartment.
when she sees him, she takes a moment to stare from afar.
when she sees him, she lets her heart trace its own fissures.
hunched, tired, smoking, his back is a foreign country. sayo closes her eyes and leans into it anyway, wet hands a gentle deathgrip, and breathes in her own homecoming. her knees shake, her head spins and she wants to cry.
when she murmurs his name, “sen,” it is more of a whimper. a cry of submission. an admission of need.
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