*"It doesn't matter…Its healed and I didn't feel it.”*

I was crumbling. No, actually—I felt like she was trying her damnest to make me explode. If I had hands, I’d be yanking my hair out over her absolute refusal to see what I’d done. To know how much it ripped me up inside to see her ruined, ropy flesh spread across her whole left side. How much it gutted me, nauseated me, to see my own work, preserved on her warm skin and dark pelt that I had loved so much before—that I still loved, that I couldn’t get away from no matter how long I stayed away, no matter how fast I ran, no matter how hard I fought and cracked myself upside the head.

I loved Jiji. I couldn’t deny it (have I ever tried to?). And look what I was doing to her, by loving her so hard—look at how much pain she was in because I wanted her safe. Look!. Her tears bubbled and my chest cracked and they started spilling down her cheeks and I was pacing in place, my hooves dancing worriedly underneath me, unsure and throbbing with everything I didn’t know how to handle. What could I do to stop her tears when every move I made was a wound in her heart?

How could I love her?

How could she love me?

HOW COULD SHE LOVE ME?

*"Please. Goodbye .... it means going away and I don't want you to go away.”*

"I…” I don’t wanna go away ‘neither, I wanted to say—but the words balled up in my throat, stuck and scratchy and bulky with the truth that kept my tongue clean. Because I didn’t want to leave her—but how could I stand in her shadow, when all I ever did was make her cry?

*”It means so much time passing that you forget the important stuff and ... and ... I don't want to forget."*

"I…” I said again, a fucking broken record, useless and gaping at her reluctant tears. But her words had hit me harder than she thought—like, I actually felt the right-hook straight in my gut, winding me and casting me to the ground. Because time was somewhere in my blood, but even I couldn’t stop it for her.

(How could she love me?)

*"I want to remember your voice and the way you look at me because no one looks at me the way you do. I want to remember your silly blue hair and the way your face looks when you're embarrassed.”*

"Fuck off,” is what ended up jumping out of my mouth, pulled forward by her words about my silly blue hair and the embarrassment on my face. But my words were weak and wispy, bogged down with so many other things that lay in there, and the anger was nonexistent. Then—get this—my dumbass laughed, a sad little chuckle dancing its way out of my lips, making me dip my head down to hide the way my face looks when I’m embarrassed.

(How could she love me?)

*”... I want to remember how much I love you. I don't want that to fade away with time."*

But how—

--how—

–how--

“How could you love me?” It finally slipped from my tongue; along with a wetness I wasn’t about to admit to anytime soon. I shook my head again, ponderously—clearly riding the struggle buss, because something inside me wanted out and I was too blocked up with bullshit to let it out. "How…why me?” I looked at her too bright eyes, their bloodshot sogginess, and how they bubbled both from the depths of her heart and the sting of agony that I was giving her. But she still cried for me. She still loved me.

"….what did I do to deserve you?” I breathed.







@[Ranjiri]