*"Thank you."*

I felt a tremor in her body as she came close to me; the tone of her voice constricted my throat for a few seconds. “Yeah,” I answered her, barely a breath, as though I were afraid of scaring her off with the regular boom of my voice. Like she was spun glass or something even more fragile than that, precariously standing in my embrace, the slightest breeze a terror and a threat to her bones.

Delicate and precise—so poised ready to shatter, with nothing but my rough touch keeping her from the cold stones of the ground.

*"Why are you so skinny?"*

“I always lose weight in winter,” came the words spilling form my tongue; I heard them as though they were coming from far away, “this one is just a little harder, is all. I’m fine.” I breathed it into her mane, my cheek resting against the beating warmth I could feel under her skin. I clung to that warmth, breathing evenly—in and out, in and out—trying and failing to wash the acid taste in my mouth, the bile that was threatening to rise in my throat and lurch everywhere, ugly and black like the lie I had just told.

The lie. The very first outright lie I had ever let escape my mouth. The first lie I had ever told my Jiji—woven without a second thought and escaping so smooth and casual from my throat, it felt natural. Right. Easy. And yet, even though the words had left me, their shadow remained and embedded itself in my flesh, both inside and out—poisoning me, shriveling something dignified inside me so that it curled up in its own corner, ashamed and wounded by what had happened. It felt like some ancient wordless covenant had been shattered on a stone, thrown by a babe in the heat of a tantrum, smashed beyond all repair by a few flippant phrases. I knew, almost at once, that I hated, hated, hated to lie for any reason, at any time.

There was just one thread of humanity keeping it all together, keeping the bile in the back of my throat and my whole body steady and strong around Jiji: I couldn’t take Jiji to that place with a clear conscience. I couldn’t take her to the tears flowing brokenly from my eyes as I laid confused and shattered atop an icy-white body; I couldn’t take her to the nightmares that still plagued me, the doubts and the fears that clutched my back at all hours of the night. Her father had just died and—well look at her. How could I saddle her with my shitty problems when she was so broken down (and fragile) by the death of her father?

How could I do that to her?

How?

So…I lied.

I lied and I…I touched her with my lips again, burrowing into her mane and tugging on a lock there to get her to follow me. “C’mon, Ji,” I said gently walking along the shore of a lake that hadn’t been there before, “Let’s find some place to rest, hmm? You…you look tired…”


@[Ranjiri]



talk