yoru no uta

I know your name,

I know your skin,

I know the way

these things begin;


But I don\'t know

what I would give of myself,

how I would live with myself

if you don\'t go.


It won\'t do

to dream of caramel,

to think of cinnamon

and long

for you.





_____________________________________________________________________________________________________



The world was spinning, and thoughts rushed and buzzed through her brain like cars speeding on a highway. She took half-steps in every direction, desperate to grab something to call real, desperate for silence.



The ground was on fire, and she could feel beads of sweat—thick as crawling beetles—tumbling down her forehead and neck. By the time she stopped moving it was too late; her body was spinning on a whirlwind and her blood rocked and splashed the hot walls of her stomach.



Sudden but poignant bile filled her tongue like a bad spirit and she opened her eyes, running and tripping before she knew she was awake, to the bathroom. There, she doubled on the cold tiles, and threw up.



It took her a few seconds to catch her breath, gasping, her shoulders high, her hands on the icy ground. She stared at the beige-brown that floated in the watery bowl with dull eyes, hating herself for doubling up on dinner the night before. The dry poignant odor filled her senses with the memory of her nightmare and she writhed and coughed and added to it.



She tugged the silver lever quickly that time, forcing herself to ignore the dizzying smell and torturing taste as it spun away.



Her stomach muscles were sore with the force of the upheaval and her hair clung to her face, lank and perspired.



She dropped her body sidelong against the wall, staring gray-eyed ahead at nothing. Morning was on the brim of becoming, and a cool lavender light poked through the white eyelets of the lacey curtain. It was still early enough to take a shower before school, and the thought of slipping behind the curtain and into a world of warm water was so appealing. But she couldn’t move, and her mind kept humming with images of the night before. Never chase fried shrimp with your brother’s cooking and go to bed tense ever again.



“Sakura?” Kero’s voice was uncharacteristically soft on the other side of the door. She could see his concern in her mind, hovering like his small body out there in the hall. She opened her mouth to answer, but another sickening wave threatened her and she went pale and silent. She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against the wall, grateful to the underdraft from the window for making it cool to touch.



“Sakura? You okay?”



She managed a dull “Mhm” in response that time, wishing more than anything for this to go away. The real debate was between the warm shower and her inviting blankets now, still soft no doubt from the comfort she’d found in the earlier hours of the night. That was before the twisted tangled upside-down nightmare that was already gone from her memory. She felt as though she’d been spinning in jagged circles.



“You were mumbling in your sleep.” he pressed. His voice jarred her into reality from the short while she’d been drifting away from it.



“I’m fine.” she promised, her voice dryer than she’d hoped for. “I’m coming back to bed in a minute.”



She’d made the decision before she expected to. The nausea of it sat like a thin film on her skin, making her sweat, making the pink cotton on her body feel like wool. All she wanted was to get this taste out of her mouth before it renewed itself, and maybe to sleep away her mindset until the alarm broke the chain.



She didn’t get her wish.



Each time she closed her eyes, something snuck from nowhere to startle her awake again. Her limbs jerked involuntarily when she was forced to consciousness, and twice again she scrambled for the bathroom, sick.



She must have left the bathroom door open, she supposed. When she opened her eyes, she was lying curled on the bathroom tiles, hugging her arms beneath the side of her face—they were temptingly cold on her skin, and her blood was so hot…



From nowhere, her brother was grabbing her beneath her shoulders and pulling her to an upright. She protested; her stomach hurt; her head was swimming in a marsh of wispy white.



“It’s not time to go to school.” she whined. The counter and walls and ceiling all swooped by her eyes in one motion. She could see sunlight bursting through the curtain, more lavish and yellow than she remembered it.






Her brother put his hand on her forehead and she fell into it, blackness surrounding her irises. “So cold…” she swooned.



“You don’t feel warm…” He may have said more, but what little she comprehended was miles above the surface of her waves. Adagio. Was he even talking to her? Her blood was burning; she could see the red in her eyelids.



“…back to bed.” she heard.



“Can’t,” she mumbled, “have to go to school. I have to help with the—” a yawn “—festival stuff.”



“You’re going to bed.” His voice was a dull command.



“You can’t tell me what to do.” she blearily argued, just before she dropped her head against his chest, and drifted into another burning dream.







She was feeling better by the time her alarm went off, which was the next thing she remembered. The incessant buzzing stopped with a slam from her flailing hand. Unsure whether or not she’d been sleeping—curled on the cool sheets with the blankets kicked away—she felt like the entire early morning had been another day. Her mouth was still bitter with bad dreams coated in spearmint toothpaste; her arms were dotted with goose-bumps.



The television was on, and Kero was perched eagerly over a game controller. The slam of little plastic buttons was a constant rhythm.



“Feelin’ better?” He snuck a glance over his shoulder, but something buzzed on the screen and he snapped back to attention. She smirked. “Yes.”



It was only a dull pain in her stomach muscles now. Her head was light, but she had her balance back. With it came the memories of the earlier morning.



“Did you feel anything foreboding?” Kero managed over the beeps and oddities of his game. There was a digital red car speeding down a black racetrack on the screen. She was already dressed, straightening her gray tie in the mirror. “Hm?”



“Your dreams.”



“Oh.” She crinkled her nose at the reflection of her flyaway morning hair. It had been a restless sleep, she could confirm that much. “No.” She decided not to justify that there were a lot of things on her mind, and she couldn’t even prove to herself that this wasn’t a lie. She busied herself more than necessary with her hair to avoid any more questions.



______________________________________________________________________________________



“Wait.” Tomoyo said, softer sometimes than herself when she spoke. Class was over and everyone was fluttering around and past them like a carnival crowd; Sakura had only made it as far as the door when she felt the hand touch her wrist, even lighter than her own. She cringed—and felt guilty for it.



“Talk to me.” she heard Tomoyo inhale. “Please?”



Sakura closed her eyes as she spun around to face her with a half-smile that may or may not have been genuine. “Sure.”



They didn’t talk; at least not for a while. But Sakura knew the conversation would come as she watched Syaoran’s car disappear down the road, without her. It took with it her solace.



It wasn’t a very cold day for December—in effect the sun was bright, turning the half-melted mounds of snow into mirrors unbearable to look at. The wind was dull, irritating the bottom inches of gray skirts that hung free from their stagnant black wool coats. Ashy clouds shifted and tumbled like fish in a bowl, and Sakura felt sure the sun had moved them to spy on her.



The late Thursday afternoon burned the crown of her head and buzzed like summer in her ears, not relenting. For a second, Sakura worried a twin wave of nausea would return from that morning; all through class she had felt it threatening to rise in her throat, never quite making it. She was twisting her hands in their red cotton gloves and monitoring each breath to bury the aspiration of them.



Around them, the schoolyard had become a skeletal field of wooden boards that would soon be a stage. The students and teachers were a million miles away as they made it so.



She and Tomoyo were walking circles, slowly, on the sidewalk that endlessly wrapped around the school. They couldn’t leave, not with signs and snowflakes and streamers to hang, dresses to pin and scripts to memorize.



“I’m sorry about yesterday.” Sakura finally said, her voice a hundred miles away. She watched her shoes, swallowing the grooves in the sidewalk. “In the library…”



The wind stole her voice, sending powdery top-layers of white from the dry branches to make the wind swirl white like a snow globe.



She wanted to mention the kiss, but she couldn’t think of a way to do so without sounding like she was still in junior high, giggling at summer camp. Promise not to tell he’s the only one I’ve ever kissed. Promise not to tell what we did in that hallway.



Instead she just stopped walking. Time stopped. The beat of the universe, like a drum—the kids, the teachers, the stage—just a dissonant piece of her world. The wind made her hair wild in a little green headband. She had her hand in a fist against her chest, and the inside of her eyelids was red and gray.



She could feel Tomoyo looking at her; not staring, but waiting just the same. Her eyes would stand out from the skylight like a missing piece in camouflage. She wouldn’t speak.



There was something very important to be said here. Sakura knew it. The words were hers—she knew that also. But she couldn’t breathe, and her mind was full of fog. Emotionless, pushing the feelings and notions away. Parted lips, the cold wall against her back and a black messenger bag on the ground by her feet. The school logo shining red embroidery in the lights. It was exhausting, trying to forget the taste. It refused to abandon her.



Sakura didn’t trust herself with the responsibility of words, she wanted to hide in question marks where nothing was stagnant, and there could be no guilt.



“Do you wish it hadn’t happened?” She said, and opened her eyes. The world filled her vision through gleaming smog that turned into the reflections from the snow. Tomoyo was standing dangerously close, though no closer than ever before. She was too elegant like that, with her eyes so dark and sharp, surrounded by eternal whiteness, the edges of her hair glowing light as steam. She was too pretty when her lips barely moved and she said, “No…”



Sakura looked sharply away. Blur of bricks, and then the still wall of the school. Her stomach was tumbling, and she pleaded with her stomach not to recreate her morning.



The truth was, she didn’t either.
With a new bravery, Sakura looked back at her. It was false bravery, but she took it anyway. “It can’t happen again, though.” She quietly said. “It was just one of those weird things, you know?” She brightened suddenly and added, “We should get back to the auditorium—didn’t you promise to show Chiharu-chan what to do with her hair for the crown? And Etsuya-kun…”



They were walking again, and the conversation flowed like chords on a grand piano.



“Has he told you he loves you?”



“Who?”



“Etsuya-kun…”



The clouds moved over the sun again, and everything was like a new coloring book with slate pages. Tomoyo pulled on the collar of her coat, but the chill in her had nothing to do with the wind.
She wouldn’t lie, not again. She was the one who’d wanted this—the one to drag Sakura from the


shadows of a silence she just possibly wasn’t ready to leave behind. It was the least she could do not to lie.



Tomoyo knew things like this; it happened with her mother sometimes, when there were things that they did not want to say. The silence would twist like knives, and sentences would come in the form of questions. Nothing would be answered, and in ten minutes they would be talking as though nothing in the world was wrong and everything was in place again. This was the dinner table. This was Christmas in Toyama.



She loved her mother with all of her heart. She really did, but these things happened beyond human control, and she wanted to spare Sakura the same awkwardness. But maybe it was genetic.



When the sun spilled over them again, she felt as though she didn’t deserve the warmth. “What makes you think he would tell me he loves me?”



“I don’t know.” They were looking straight ahead, sometimes at the sky, the ground; never each other. “It’s just kinda a feeling, I guess.” Sakura’s voice lowered and turned warm. “I won’t ask anymore if you don’t want to tell me.”



A car passed somewhere beyond the school gates, they both heard it.



Tomoyo closed her eyes in a long blink. She could tell Sakura about the music room late after school was through. She could tell her about the piano keys and the fingertip brushes on her skin, or the long drives home in the snow.



But she wouldn’t tell her about the later nights, where fingertips could be lead in the dark, or what happened when the car had stopped, and the engine was off. She wouldn’t tell anyone.



Maybe they would forever be her secret. Maybe one day she would get married to a man still faceless in her mind, and have children without names. Maybe they would ask her: is Daddy your first kiss? And she would say yes, because by then the past would be nothing but a distant blur. And he would only be a little ghost on her tongue when she heard piano keys played just so, in all the ways her mother turned silent at memories of her own husband, erased from current reality like melted snow.



The funny thing was, Sakura would marry Syaoran. And their children would have eyes that were either dark brown or bright green. And if they asked her: was Daddy your first kiss? She could say yes, and pull the blankets up to their chins, and tell them goodnight.



That was the only real love in the world. It wasn’t sex behind a locked door, a body pressed against the curve of a black piano. It wasn’t anything Etsuya would give her.



“He doesn’t love me.” Tomoyo promised, not sure it was true but at least not lying.



“Don’t be too surprised,” Sakura said, looking at her with a sudden fond grin. “If he’s anything like Syaoran, he’ll turn red before he ever admits it. And you’ll be lucky if he says it more than annually. But it’ll still be there just the same.”



She looked back ahead with pink cheeks. It was true that hers wasn’t a very verbal love. Scraps of evidence happened like flowers coming into bloom. Hands touching and releasing under a library table. The quickest kisses behind window shades. A blink and it was through, with no sounds to prove it had ever been there at all. But she was happy. Her cheeks were convex with the tight smile on her lips, and her eyes were bright green.



It was enough to make Tomoyo form a smile of her own, though more discreetly. She was happy again just to watch Sakura.



“I should look for Chiharu-chan so I can show her what to do about her crown.”



Sakura sighed, reminded of the festival again. “I have to memorize my lines.”



“It helps sometimes if you write them down.”



“But doesn’t that take a lot of time?”



“Well, how many lines….”



Their voices faded and disappeared as they stepped into the school, and a cloud overlapped the sun. Everything was in place again.