Excerpts about a twenty-three year old universe that graced the all too lukewarm planet called Earth.
Angels don’t ask for love but still you fall.
Him, who’d paint his skin a sky’s blue just to see how the colors would change hues when the golden hour gulps him up completely.
Angels don’t have wings but skin that glow.
Him, whose earthy voice drips into my palms when he sneaks into my room, slotting his tidal entirety on my all-too-small bed. Because he loves 6:30 right here and like this – has the perfect angle to watch the golden hour peek through my bronze drapes like syrup on dewy mornings, whistles along a few love birds rounding the stray mango branches outside my window and letting the breeze stain his cheeks pink. He smiles, eyes bright and tells me a few things that don’t make sense, but somehow because it’s him, they do.
Angels don’t have halos but bleached peach hair.
Him, who’d drag me to cold beaches and pockets full of empty film, leaving his shoes somewhere he’d forget later when he jumps into the icy waves that crawl up his slacks and capturing me through the lens as I yell for him to balance himself properly — imprinting the world in his eyes through a flimsy strip of plastic and grinning as he yells at me through the loud ocean behind him that he wishes we brought a bottle and a pen to stray a haiku on the back of a receipt into the sea.
Him. who chases the salt infused winds coming home from the pacific. He runs along the coast and I chase after him until he finds a spot to lie in the sand and watch the sky shift from blue to red, tells me he wishes the world could slow down for a bit so he could catch his breath and he spews more nonsense that he knows I’ll write about later. After his films are all used up, he tells me he misses convenience store ramen and races me back halfway to where we started — loser’s treat.
(We end up glaring at each other through the dark and spend two hours looking for his shoes.)
Angels don’t walk in oceans but rise like waves.
Him, whose endless blabber about the unknown keeps my mother entertained while they wrap up spring rolls in the kitchen, two days after I finally give in to his unceasing whines about seeing the home I grew up in.
And mother’s half cooing, half reprimanding because he just can’t seem to get the chartreuse wrapper folds right and now he has his lip bitten between his teeth in concentration, and somehow the communication barrier melts off when he recalls a time when one of his friends gave up on teaching him how to cook in broken language — because with his angular grin and trenchant giggles the world will still, in some way, understand what he means.
He charms her, of course, somehow finding a way to crawl into her good side.
The hum of their soft laughter decorates the walls and my chest glows at the sound, and my mother speaks in dialect when she sees me wordlessly stand there and tells me out loud how entirely different he is in person compared to the photos of him — he is a real beauty, isn’t he? — and I just nod, poking the furrow between his eyebrows when he asks what she means.
Angels don’t beam but shimmer under stars.
Him, who smells like the start of a waiting adventure, rain hitting the earth, wafting cherry pollen and the lingering spritz of amber from his expensive perfume, utterly out of place in my mossed balcony with proportions almost too perfect for humans like me to compare to. He watches the stars like they shine solely for him, and maybe they do, eyes that speak a thousand thoughts reflecting the milky way’s shimmer. The coconut nectar in the juice box between those fingers turns lukewarm as he submerses himself deeper into the night.
“To think that we’re staring at vast space. That isn’t a roof, or a blanket adorned with lights. It’s an open window to the unknown, isn’t that incredible?”
Aren’t you incredible?
“You could just fly or float, and you’d be out there – whirling through infinity.”
And maybe his eyes didn’t reflect the universe in them after all, maybe that’s just him I’m seeing beyond the glass of his irises. A universe of his own.
Angels don’t wear robes but sized up designer slacks.
Him, who’d swim in his worn down oversized sweaters rather than the collection of starched designer dress shirts polluting the expanse of his closet (and pouts, recoils, grained with salt, when I bring up his unethical splurging when he can’t even bring himself to wear half of his bourgeois hauls twice – “It’s fashion, you wouldn’t understand – Ow! Ouch – but it’s the truth!“), spewing half quiet laughter with his fingers lost in my cat’s coat, tells me he misses his dog that he’d sent away back to his hometown — because that’s what being caught up at the peak does to people, he guesses.
– detaches them from who they actually love, what actually matters, what makes them human, to chase after something that tastes far too stale in the end.
I look at him as he mumbles those words, cradling his cheeks between my hands to remind him that he’s still human, to me, and that even though he’ll leave the next day to chase after that bland burn and reach a far greater height, it doesn’t really detach us all from his side.
He only smiles, because he knows I’ll never understand what it’s like anyway.
Angels don’t have harps but a voice so deep the world could drown.
Him, who tackles me into fuji apple boxes after disappearing for months without a word, not thinking twice if he’d spend the next two hours holding icicle packs over the tender spot on my head— all the while profusely cursing, a habit he only shows behind closed doors, at all the jump scares from the dated horror films that I force him to sit and watch through as compensation. He tells me about his adventures exploring Shizuoka, slips a good luck charm in the pages of my coffee-table book when I get up to change the movie from the CD player.
He ends up falling asleep on my lap, leaks a tear that stains through my cotton pants when he thinks I’m not looking, and forgets that the world needs him just this once.
Him, who breathes for the first time in a while.
2018
© Rizu Lu
All Rights Reserved.
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