yoru no uta

Tonight I’ll close my eyes again,

try to see your face

and listen for your voice to tell me

it’s alright to sleep

convince myself I’ll wake up in another time and place

knowing all the while it’s a promise I can’t keep




_____________________________________________________________________________________________________





The dark blue shirt was too big for her, its collar was too wide. It only covered one shoulder—the left—while the other was smooth in the lavender film of early dawn, like a midnight filled with amaretto. The line of her right underarm trailed to the slight rise of her breast, animated as she breathed, barely moving.



The morning was so early that it was still ashy with night; a streetlight made a white ribbon on her face, vertically hugging her forehead and nose and parted mouth. In her sleep she ran her fingers through her crinkled hair, letting the pale atmosphere into it indefinitely like a broken window in an abandoned church.



Her hand dropped to the pillow, an absent fist; and when she breathed her stomach moved to her chest and back down again. The dark green blankets were tangled at her waist, freeing pleasant glimpses of her legs for admiration. She was a renaissance sleeper, silent and acrylic, a wonder the world did not know it contained.



Sometimes she would spoil him with images of pink satin and lacey trim, or those white nightgowns with sides that pulled by drawstrings, and of course her sweet little grins. But this was how he loved her best: In a t-shirt she’d pulled from his closet and those stupid white panties with cherry print at the top of her legs, tangled in his blanket. She was natural and unaware, pale and mostly asleep.



He’d been watching her for the best of an hour with his cheek on the adjacent pillow.



She’d been sleeping since late evening, following an afternoon of dizzying contact. After days of flinching from his touch, suddenly she was holding the hips of his shirt in her fists and kissing him against the door of his apartment after school. He couldn’t stop touching her when she was pressed against him like she was.



Her thigh around his hip, he could feel her back muscles move beneath his hands. Her tongue on his jaw, he drew her skin to his teeth in a vacuum of a kiss—there was a faded purple scar on the collar of her neck now to show.



And then they’d been lying on his livingroom floor. She was on his chest, where he held her. She was giggling.



He remembered the feeling, his hands between her black uniform and her peach skin, at her hip where she curved like a glass vase. Broad, then thin, then broad again. Sometime as they were kissing, he put her on her back and overtook her; she watched with misty eyes and wordless kisses.



He could see the underlying seams of her skirt, up over her stomach while white cotton and red cherries hung like a flag of surrender around her ankle. She arched from the floor, the red and gold rug so thick with the memories of his home. She was here, she was now. Her hands, against the rough fibers, just fists caged under his fingers.



With even, rapid movements he coaxed her, triggered by her aspirated breaths and spilled murmurs. She said it to him all the time, but he didn’t tell her he loved her. Not like that. Not when words were so small that they could have been swallowed; or worse cried in vain like the ten thousand images in his head when he was shrouded in her. Like the first time, with the fierce summer sun buzzing above her bedroom window and the sweat that gathered in the apex of her ribs. The things that couldn’t be spoken.



And he held himself in her with all of his being until she shuddered and let out a cry and her pupils turned to mascara teardrops. The memory built in him like certain tension; her face, eyebrows twisted, lips sweating, green eyes pleading. He came into her as she was descending, gasping, sweating, looking at his face to watch the fluctuating expression. She kissed his forehead as he did it, and then he caught her bleary smile.






She took an awkward breath in her sleep as he watched, interrupting his admiration. Through the night, she’d tossed and turned infrequently, murmuring light uneasiness until her unconscious arms found his body and she settled. The first night they’d ever spent together he was bothered by his inability to wander in the sheets without being grabbed unconsciously, but she always fit so well against him that it took very little getting used to.



“Syaoran?” Her voice was a sleepy-cool whisper, consumed by the drowsy blue light that slipped from the curtain. The streetlight glow on her face rushed away and disappeared when she turned her head.



He pushed the hair from her forehead and kissed her skin with lingering lips. Close. “It’s still early,” he whispered, “go back to sleep.”



Her eyes were open when he drew away from her. She was bright-eyed, stars all over her irises, smiling like the flittering constellations that belonged to only her.



“You’re awake,” she said, and raised her arms around his shoulders to pull him down to her. He was cottony warm like fresh clothes from the dryer. And when he kissed her bare shoulder, all the muscles in her body went limp. It was the best way in the world to be woken.



She sighed to the lavender paint-spill in her eyelids. “You’re so warm…” She could taste the morning on him, bitter and sweet like early un-ripened fruit.



He drew back to look at her; his eyes were bright brown, catching the streetlight orange that escaped through the slit of his long green curtain like a lantern. His hand pushing the hair up from her forehead was like the very palm of summer itself. What little of their skin to feel the air beyond body and blankets was cool with the winter draft that lingered throughout the apartment.



But here, it was the middle of a sunbeam, and they were drifting in zero gravity.



“How are you?” He was kissing her mouth in brief raindrop kisses as he spoke. She blinked longly each time. Decadence. “Did you sleep well?”



She was drawing circles on the back of his neck with her index finger; his hair caught itself between her fingers and slid away like water. The kisses slowed and stopped. Her eyes were mellow and bright, she glowed like a firefly every dawn.



“Mhm,” she hummed. He kissed her forehead. “You were murmuring in your sleep.”



“Strange dreams, I guess,” she said and blinked.



“Like what?”



“I don’t know. I can never remember.”



“It happens often?”



“Why are we talking about this?” She arched her back and brought herself to his mouth again. That time, it lingered. She could feel his breath on her tongue, even and slow. He was always so deft with her.



“I worry,” he mumbled morning into her mouth. She broke away to snicker at him.



“What?”



“Nothing.” She pressed her forehead against his. “Nothing. Thanks for always worrying about me.”



She could see his frown in the semi-dark. “You should still be…”



She kissed him.



“…careful…”



“Uh-huh.” Her hands were sliding down his hips.



“I mean it, Sakura…” He closed his eyes. “Dreams are…”



Her breath was warm in his hair, the sheets crinkled and breathed as she moved. “…important things…”



“Oh, I know.” She whispered, maybe mocking him a little too much.



“You can be so reckless.” But he kissed her shoulder again anyway, and they tumbled in one pirouette of a movement until she was on his chest. She kissed his mouth and jaw and chest. She burrowed backwards under the blankets and kissed the rim of his stomach too.



Hot rivulets soared through his thighs and she was sliding his heavy gray shorts to his knees. In the dark she seemed so far away; he could barely see her shadow-stuck smile, her hair coming forward over the oval of her face; she sat up, the blankets clinging to her shoulders like the robe of a queen.



“I want to see you,” he whispered. She pulled the blue shirt over her shoulders, and her breasts barely moved with the force when she flung it from her body and made it disappear.



She put her hands between his thighs, where the darkness thrived the most. He indulged in her form, darkened like the last filmstrip of a silver-screen movie star; he stole what he could. Her shoulders were almost bright with gray daybreak promising them a sun soon, and she curved and narrowed as his eyes went down. Her stomach muscle was bent above her belly-button like a black wire, and her thighs were just beige-gray blurs around his legs.



Her hand moved in slow-slide motions around him, and he began to rise in her palm. His arms shook, tremulous. “Sakura…”



She shushed him, sighing between her perfect lips. So perfect, and the only other thing alive in the world. “Let me feel you,” she whispered, “just let me taste you.”



He made a low groan of a sound, and watched her body move over his for as long as he could before he was overcome with the urge to tilt back his head. She leaned forward over him, kissing his chest—as far as she could reach from her kneel. His hands could not decide. He reached up and held her hips, then her shoulders, then her breasts—which he flattened in his palms.



It was so hard to think, so hard to settle and linger with her hand moving so frantically and the euphoria growing so quickly. All so quickly. He made some kind of a groan, and in that instant she whispered, “Come on; I can feel you let me taste you.”



She moved away, leaving his hands with nothing to hold to. And he could feel her open mouth around it. And her tongue teasing the rim. And her hand still forcing life into him. And he grabbed her hair in a fist. And he meant not to tug it so violently but all of his awareness left and he couldn’t be sure what was up and what was down and, he… and….



With a violent shudder, everything came pouring out. His breath fluctuated and then throbbed like his pummeling heart. Though hazy eyes he saw her, straddled on his hip, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist and giving him the smile he so adored.



“Come here,” he murmured, and opened his arms to her as she lay forward on his stomach. The side of her head was pressed to his chest. He breathed in the smell of her hair, like the bottle of rainforest green shampoo in the shower stall. “I can’t pretend I don’t like it when you act so strange.”



She whispered, “I love your eyes when you’re like that. It’s almost like you aren’t you.”



He kissed the part of her messy hair. “I’ll never understand you.”



“You’re the only one I’ll ever see that way,” she hummed. “It’s always been you, you’re my only one.”



She sounded too much like she was trying to convince someone other than him. He looked at her until she lifted her neck to do the same, chin on his chest. He pushed the hair from her face.



“Sometimes,” he said, “you scare me.”



“Why?” She blinked.



He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “Don’t go anywhere.”



With a secret smile of gratitude she wrapped her arms around his chest and closed her eyes. “It’s too early to even move,” she said.



“That isn’t what I mean.”



The only answer was her quiet breaths, and a ghost of ecstasy fleeing his muscles.




______________________________________________________________________________________




Morning struck her like a knife; she gasped, separated from her dream like an infant its mother’s womb. Eyes half open, the first thing she saw was her own arm, black in a line of shadow where it bent at the elbow. Her skin glowed orange in the sun, and her hand was in a weak fist and she held a random patch of sheets—so pale a blue that they were white in the morning glow.



For a moment she was afraid to move, worried that he might still be there. Dreading and almost wanting, she waited for his hand to trace her hip, for his warm mouth behind her neck.



But of course, there was nothing. She’d turned away from him in the night and manipulated a sigh to sound like a yawn.



“Tomoyo?” He’d lifted the hair that covered her cheek and watched her closed eyes for a while. The silence was tight, too tight, until she realized that she was pretending to be asleep. After that it wasn’t very hard to bear.



He kissed the side of her face and then she’d heard him move from the bed with the rustling of clothes being pulled and wriggled into.



She almost opened her eyes then, if for no reason other than to force a fatigued goodbye. But she changed her mind when the weight of his leaning arms pressed the mattress edge where she lay. He pushed the hair from her forehead. She felt like a test subject in a white laboratory display. “Goodnight,” he whispered, “I love you.”



And then she was glad she’d stayed so still.



Now it was morning. She’d slipped into the catacombs through the night, a bleak field of dusty dreams that all centered on the dull throbbing pain between her legs. She could still see those green eyes as though they’d been there for eyes to see. Sometimes when Sakura was sitting at her desk she would lean on her elbow and the edge of her shirt was tugged from the top of her skirt. It was a triangle of beige, and maybe it was as smooth as it looked. She spent nights wondering about it sometimes.



And sometimes, in the darkest middle of her moments with Etsuya, when his hands were no longer his and his body was separate and inside of her, she thought about it. About how weak she was, and how strongly she’d cry it out if only she could hear her.



I love you. Why am I here, Sakura, when it’s always been you?




The alarm cut her thoughts, and she remembered where she was. Her uniform was still thrown to the ground by her bed, and her bare skin shushed against the sheets. She could still taste him through her pores. There was no time, now, to shower.



She was self-conscious for most of the early morning, and she fussed with her hair for the tenth time in the mirror of the girl’s bathroom at school, tugging the edges and checking for strays.



In her distraction she hadn’t noticed that one of the slate-gray doors to the bathroom stalls had closed. A horrible sound was what caught her attention, a retching, vicious series of coughs followed by liquid nausea.



Through the bottom of the stall she could see the school’s black messenger bag on the tiles, and a keychain of a teddy-bear dangling from the zipper. She pursed her mouth in both sympathy and confusion.



“Rika-chan?” She whispered, once the sounds had been replaced with breath-catching gasps.



The answer was a loud flush, and she stood back as the stall door opened. Rika stood with her shoulder against the cold metal stall, pallid and drawn, her pupils tiny pinpricks in swimming brown eyes. There were tears burning red on her blotchy cheeks; she sniffled.



Tomoyo drew her eyebrows together. She felt stupid even to ask, but for the first time in ever could think of nothing better to say than “Are you alright?”



“No,” was the response. She chortled a sob and picked her bag from the floor. She didn’t get farther than the stall’s threshold before she hung her head and broke with a fresh wave of tears. “No,” her voice was tight and constrained, “I’m pregnant.”



She walked past Tomoyo, avoiding her reflection in the mirrors, and she splashed her face and mouth with water from the sink. She looked strong enough to stop crying for a second, but it was gone in the same moment; her back hit the wall and she slumped to the floor.



“I’m pregnant,” she whispered, to nobody that time.



When Tomoyo knelt beside her, she was holding a tissue from her purse. The girl took it gratefully, and dabbed her eyes.



“I’ve known for a while, but I just—” she swallowed a hot slippery lump in her throat, “—just ignored it, like it wouldn’t exist if I didn’t think about it. But I took the test last night.” She shook her head. “I can’t tell him. I can’t tell him, it would only worry him.”



She stared at the tissue, crinkled and damp with her tears. “I have to get an abortion.”



Tomoyo felt her eyes burning with something she couldn’t define, and suddenly she wanted to cry as well. “Oh, Rika,” she whispered, and tucked a lock of dark brown hair behind the girl’s ear. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”



The answer was a sniffle and a nod. “I, um—” She blew her nose daintily in the tissue and crumpled it into a fist. “I was saving up for a car; I have the money.” She looked at Tomoyo, her dark eyes red around the eyelids with tears. “But my father’s a doctor, and I don’t know where I can go without him finding out.” She looked at the ground and shook her head. “I don’t want anyone to know.”



She closed her eyes, and when Tomoyo put a hand on her shoulder she choked on another sob. “I’m sorry I’m bothering you with all this.”



Tomoyo closed her eyes in a long blink, as though trying to silence an argument in her head. Finally, her voice was soft and she said, “Okay.” Rika looked at her with question marks in her eyes.



“There’s a really good clinic. It’s an hour from here by bus, but they’re still open after school lets out, and you might have to wait a little but you don’t need an appointment.”



“Where?”



“Outside of Tokyo a little bit.”



Rika was twisting the tissue in her fist. “Thanks,” she whispered. Then, “come with me?”



“Sure…” Her voice was soft. “Sure, I’ll go.”



As they were standing, Rika said, “Tomoyo?”



“Mm?”



“You didn’t ask me any questions.” There was unfiltered gratitude in her eyes. “Thank you.”



Tomoyo offered a brief smile and ripped a paper towel from the dispenser while Rika turned on the water again to rinse her face in the sink. “God, I’m so embarrassed.” She sniffled and sobbed a giggle. “I just wanna get cleaned up and go to class. Please, don’t tell anyone about this.”



“No,” she handed her the rough gray towel, “I won’t.”



“Tomoyo?” She shut the water with a simple twist of the knob. “Can I ask you something.”



“Mm?”



They both picked up their messenger bags from where they’d left them on the ground, and walked towards the door.



“How did you know about that clinic?”