yoru no uta

And I still need the beauty of words sung and spoken

And I live with the fear that my spirit will be broken

And that\'s the way I thought it would be



So I\'ll keep you wondering what time I\'m arriving

And you\'ll drive me crazy with your backseat driving

And I\'ll talk in my sleep and you\'ll steal all the covers.

We\'ll argue it out and we\'ll call ourselves lovers




______________________________________________________________________________________





Tomoyo didn’t want to drive. It was the last place on earth she felt like harboring, the soft low seats of the dark green machine—it had once been privy to three, maybe four owners in the early nineties. It was anyone’s guess. It was bleary and morose to look at. Inside, it was warm with the coppery ventilation that shushed through the slits on the dashboard, over her knuckles and through her skirt. Etsuya’s vintage heaven.


She remembered learning about the illusion of motion. The trees, the pale brown shrubbery beneath icy snow, and all the things that rushed by the foggy windows were not the ones moving. They were, artificially warm with ears full of a no-name artist’s strings as they sped by. They were the ones being tricked.


Saying ‘okay, I’ll drive’ was so much easier than trying to explain. It was also easier than believing that he just may have understood. Neither of them talked very much, and it left a lot to wonder. She tried not to think about it and stared forward. Her thoughts—if that was what they could be called—were moving under the backs of her eyes like a current. They would break away, or she would let them free; whichever happened first. But for now it was all she could do to look through the endless white rain that dissolved as it hit the glass. Whatever kept her from veering them into an unexpected tree, or immobile patch of shrubbery.


Finally (she knew he would) he said, “You’re worried about her, aren’t you?”


She tried not to appear thoughtful. “Yes.”


“I’m sure they’re taking good care of her though.”


“Mm.” She was tapping the lever by the steering wheel in quiet desperation. Somewhere beyond all this snow there was a left turn. She needed that turn.


“She’s resilient.”


Tomoyo didn’t answer him. He was doing it again, using her to make a conversation where there wasn’t one. She eyed the radio knob and fantasized about turning it up; it didn’t matter what was playing. She could hear it, hear the noise in her head. No notes, no true lyrics. The first language must have been just noise too. How did words happen? Were they invented, or had they always been…


Left turn. She moved into in like an embrace. She could see her house now, a light somewhere on the top floor reflecting off the hood of the car. Her mother always left the upstairs office light on. Unless she was home, in which case the closed door would block the glow from the world.


The car stopped moving and she already had her hand on the door when he said her name.


“Wait.” He said. She closed her eyes in a long blink before she faced him. “Please. Don’t go yet.”


She settled, again, silent—again, and began to run her hands back and forth in the small lower apex of the wheel; just for something to look at.


“You’ve been different since yesterday.” His voice was so sincere that it burned in her like guilt. He touched her hair, and she could feel the black of his glove when it touched her jaw. She felt colors sometimes, but only his. She wondered if it was a gift from the nature of real love. Because God, if there was a god, thought that they were lovers for the things they’d done. Maybe it was meant for someone else, some other girl who would devote herself to him someday, and she’d taken it from them. She wondered if there was no god too, and this was not a misplaced offering but rather the knowledge of something greater.


She wondered if it didn’t take special senses to catch some of the magic that had been left behind by the greats.


She only knew that she wasn’t shaking away. Something said she needed to take what belonged to her, before it was gone like the air rushing through the dashboard vents.


“I know,” she whispered to her hands.


“You’ve been different longer than that.”


“I know,” she said, and looked at him. She was bright like the moon on a cloudless night, and her eyes glowed with watery dashboard lights. Orange and white dissolving in the blue. She almost smiled at him. “I have to go inside,” she said.


“Yeah…” He knew it wasn’t true. She didn’t have to anything. He expected. He expected her to lie.


She took the keys from the ignition, and a sudden sigh stopped the lights and the heat and the humming engine. It was dark, though her eyes had not dimmed. “You could come too,” she said, “If you’d like.”









Sakura, on the other hand, had seen better days. She spent the enormity of Saturday night in a filmy, ill-tasting daze. Her world was a labyrinthine blur of uneasy senseless dreams, and the rush from bedroom to bathroom. Her brother caught her once while she was sitting on the tiled floor with her back against the edge of the tub and her eyes in another place.

She said she must have fallen asleep, and he half-carried her while she half-walked back to her bed. Kero stayed on the far side of her pillow and watched her through the night. Her eyelids twitched, her lips twisted, and she made sounds of discomfort or something else—faded like an old bubblegum wrapper in dreams.


Sunday afternoon was better, when the nausea finally subsided. And she regrettably forfeited her daily blue-pill ritual because Kero was always so close by and her brother and Yuki were in-and-out of her bedroom unannounced with some new excuse to check on her. There wasn’t much room for their use on her mind anyway. She guessed there wouldn’t be for the rest of the week anyway.

She moved to the living room couch eventually, partly to save them the hassle, but mostly for herself.


There was something about being sick that made her genuinely miserable—beyond the headaches and the uneasy stomach. It was a depression, like grayscale vision. Up in her room with nothing but her thoughts and unannounced medicine checks, she was completely alone in the world.


The arm of the couch was rougher against her cheek, but the cottony thick comforter she’d stolen from her bed was enough. Someone was moving around in the kitchen. Soft voices, the bubble and sizzle of something on a fryer. Motion.


A tiny red car—that she thought looked like it had been crushed by maybe a giant elephant—was hurrying down a gray track with yellow painted lines that went very much ignored. Some music was playing in the background to cheer it on, techno and heavily trebled, a song she’d never heard.


Kero was pressing buttons, leaning as the car turned. “You’re going to crash,” she murmured, yawning. He didn’t seem to hear her. Or maybe she hadn’t spoken. This could have all been a dream, like the ones she’d had last night. Sometimes she was thirsty and she could swear she heard her brother right outside her door, and she’d call his name but he wouldn’t move. Like a shadow or a prowler not meant to be seen. Reality itself could just be a chain of illusions, and one morning she would wake up to find nothing had ever happened. She was a different girl with a different life around her.


She didn’t even notice that her eyes were closed until something crashed and she flinched them open again. Two sad chords twanged from the television speakers, a mockery. “You jinxed me,” Kero sulked.







“I’m just glad it’s Sunday and I didn’t miss any work,” Sakura said, almost getting dizzy at the thought. “I can’t catch up if I fall behind, even if it’s just a day.”


Tomoyo made some soft sound of agreement to prove she was listening, but she wasn’t really. She could see her reflection in the watery beige world inside her teacup, and she was checking it for stray hairs. Etsuya’s name was on the tip of her tongue, and his motion was rushing up her veins endlessly like his hands along her arms. Before that night, she’d never realized how aware her bones and muscles were. How many movements it involved, like each chord of all the piano keys in a particular order—touched just so—to make a piece.


She’d watched his chest move, in and slow like clouds tumbling through azure nothingness. And out again, a breeze in her hair spread across the pillows. She listened to the sound of her own name, and later thought about where it had come from. To name something new, something nobody knew anything about yet. All the places, all the ways it would be said. Whispered, suggested with his hand on her shoulder, mourned—someday not soon, giggled, spited.


There was so much to this. And she’d never been there, though he’d been over and through her innumerably. There was more than her fantasies, her daydreams. Maybe it wasn’t better than she’d imagined, but it was hers. And there were so few magical things she could steal for herself.


She didn’t feel it until she saw the rippling little splash in her reflection. Instinct; she sniffled and swallowed the rest before they could have happened.


“Tomoyo…?” Sakura’s voice was soft, barely separate from the distant noises of her house. The bedroom door was maybe a third open, and they were sitting on the floor. Someone was moving in the kitchen, sometimes the sink was running. A TV was on. Get out of here I’m trying to put the food away. I’ll put it away. Yeah, in your stomach.

She looked up, and Sakura was suddenly that much closer. Her eyes were bright and warm with concern, and she touched her cheek where the tear had fallen. Maybe she asked if she was okay. Suddenly Tomoyo couldn’t hear anything, not even the softest, most distant sounds.


It wasn’t just Etsuya—Sakura had changed now too. There were no magic colors, but she could still feel her skin, and a vivid rush of orangeyred underlay, the world inside the human body, their minds unseen, their thoughts unheard. Bright-eyed and close in her teal cotton pajamas, image of stars, chosen for her soul perhaps a hundred years back before her birth. Sakura had always existed, even if it was only in premonition and before she was really breathing. She always would, a million years after she was really gone.


Had this always existed too? Moments waiting to happen. Her hand wasn’t on Tomoyo’s cheek now. It was out of sight, and they were touching somewhere. Nobody knew where, just that it was happening, and it was wonderful. They kissed, and it was triumph over their teacup reflections. It was slower now, they knew a little more about each other than the last time.


They’d promised not to do this ever again, with their boys a few miles away, in love and thinking themselves smug for the things they did in secret. Tomoyo was waiting for them to stop again, for both of them to look away at the wall and go silent and hate themselves. But they didn’t. They were breathing now, air gliding off of their tongues and lips touching occasionally like waves crashing to shore and withdrawing. This time she was not holding Sakura’s hand. It must have been her thigh, she concluded, teal cotton bunching over her wrist and exposing the skin like a curtain as she slid her hand up until she hit a wall and there was nowhere left to go.


And she didn’t open her eyes, because she was afraid that she would wake up in bed with Etsuya, or that Sakura’s eyes would give her some refusal. It was easier this way. But Sakura was almost leading, leaning back against the floor and breathing that certain way, silent and deep, touching her arms and kissing her without relent.


Finally bold enough, Tomoyo drew back and opened her eyes to see. Sakura was still there, lying on her back and reaching up to hold her shoulders. Her eyes were devoid of thought, and the emotions were vague, but she smiled up at her, and Tomoyo leaned close and buried her face in her neck. Desperate for the embrace.


She was starting to wonder how far her fantasies went. Did she just want to see her back arch, see her desperate arch and suck away the sweat? Or did she want to wake up here in the morning, too? Every morning for the rest of her life.


Her hand was still under her nightgown, and she moved it to the dark stoop where her thighs were separate. Did she love her, or was it just this? This cotton in her hand, elastic waist that rolled down just so easily, rolled down just enough. She could feel her with her fingers, warm like lamplight and smoother than skin was meant to be in shadowed places. He’d been here a thousand times, it was prepared for him. She was going where she was not meant to be welcomed. But nothing pushed her away, and so she let herself inside as though this body was her own.


It was damp, and she wasn’t looking down. She only lowered herself to kiss her again, and each time she moved that hand she was delighted with the response. Sakura’s eyes were a little cloudier, and she was looking up at her with the wide pupils of a delirious child. Her lips were apart, and each breath was shallow, longer with each second of this.


She pressed her stomach to hers and she brought her face close. Can you feel this can you feel this? Her dark hair fell over both of them like a veil and she was watching each feature on the girl’s wonderful face. Her lips could not decide on open or closed, and her chest moved always with rugged gasps as everything got anxious and faster. Her eyes were narrow, thinking, listening. Then her mouth was open like a horizontal oval, blackness. Her back curled and her head shot back. Tomoyo stayed desperately close, watching as that stifled cry poured from the girl’s mouth and a volcano of thick liquid fell out of her body between her thighs.


She kissed Sakura so many times, almost like she was thanking her. And she left her then to go to her thighs and see what she had done. It was more beautiful than she ever could have expected, pink and beige, like a flower made of skin as she carefully parted it in her fingers. Covered with white that she had created.


She put her mouth to it, and the girl’s body shuddered, exhausted. She made an unnamed sound and touched the top of Tomoyo’s hair. It wasn’t to pull her away, but rather to keep her there. She made such tempting little sounds as her body was touched. She gently pulled the teal up further, to her stomach, and studied her body. So small. She inhaled her body, the heat where she parted in the center. And the sweet but almost tasteless remains of it all. It slid on her tongue, rippling and changing shape. She sucked in, forcing as much of it into her mouth as would go. More was coming to her now (she heard someone’s breath getting harder) and her shoulder was being taken into a small but tight grasp. Another, another, oh God another. A grinding cry, those thighs clenching and gathering around either side of her face. Pulling her in, begging for more.


With a final twitch, Sakura’s body settled again, and her hands were pulling her back up to the surface of the cotton ocean. They kissed, and her taste lingered.


She was suspecting nothing and all of a sudden her skirt was invaded by Sakura’s hands—both of them, reaching up to where she was on her knees over her. This time she put a finger—maybe two, it was hard to tell—in her, like the toe of a child still apprehensive about entering the water. Her eyes were green and full of mischief. The sudden rush was not like Etsuya’s body. He always drew a straight path in her and it was up and down again. This time it was like starting at the wonderful end, when she would retract and shudder.


Her hand gave so much attention. Same hand she used to hold when they were kids. Red gloves. Snowflakes and innocent little smiles. But she’d always hoped, before she was old enough to know what she was hoping for. Unable to hold herself up, she buried her forehead in Sakura’s cottony chest. Her hair being kissed—loved. No. Not loved. It hurt to think. It hurt, but she liked it. And she didn’t care, tumbling down like this. So let her hair be a mess. Let it fringe, let the world know. Everything in her gathered, she gritted her teeth like a caged animal and murmured wordless orphans of sounds into the girl’s covered breasts. And just before it all came tumbling down, there was a moment where nothing in the world else mattered.