I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 23

CARPE NOCTEM

            I spent the rest of the day trying to force myself to cry: stare at a lamp and fan my eyes, stop myself from blinking with my fingers, but even basic biological functions betray me. Thus, the moment I trusted Iya and Baba to be asleep, I snuck out: if I cry anywhere, it'll be Summer.

It's a clear night and the lake reflects moonlight. With my legs in the water, I sit at the edge of the deck and watch the silver puddles shiver in the breeze. All their dance draws out of me are the same berating and insulting railways I'm more than familiar with at this point in the night: I'm selfish, I'm cruel, I shouldn't exist...

Something rustles. I snap my head around, fully prepared to come face to face with some wild animal ready to maul me, only to see... Miles. The tightness in my chest eases but the sweet flutters are worse. I've passed the point of no return, haven't I? There's no potential future where I don't break my own heart.

His gaze flings around as if he expected to enter the tiny space without being seen and needs an answer for what to do now. 'I saw you leave...'

Are you stalkin me? I don't ask him out loud. I couldn't bear him saying no. I don't ask the rest aloud either. What do you want? Why don't you hate me yet? I've done everything I can, I'm out of tools. If you come closer, I won't resist, I don't have the strength and I'm too selfish. How don't you hate me yet?

Planting my palms at my sides, I go to stand up.

He leaps out of the shrubbery. 'Please don't.' Unlike mine, the beds of his eyes are swollen. His voice is feeble and cracked in a way I've never heard before. 'Please don't.'

My guilt strangles me and I can't speak so I shake my head. I don't know what it's supposed to mean. I can't do this? I can't take it? Don't look at me?

Miles doesn't listen regardless. 'I came out my mum.'

Speaking it aloud cements it into reality and he wobbles with nausea. His fingers root into his hair, just long enough now to grip. The heels of his hands jam his temples with enough force for his biceps to tense. He's going to crush his own skull. Forgetting me in the scenery, he stares out onto the lake as if a spectre has materialised out of the moonlit surface and is now hovering only ten metres away.

'I didn't mean to. It were an accident. It just... slipped out. I didn't mean to do it today as if today's not the worst possible option, as if the day's not bad enough. Like she weren't sad enough. And now I've just made it bout me. And I'm s'posed to be on her side. And I can't stop thinking about my dad and how he wouldn't be okay with it and how I'm disrespecting his memory cause now he can't have his say or owt. He can't... defend himself.

'And I shouldn't've told her cause that's what people've been warning her bout since he died, that we need a man in the house or we'll turn out rotten and now she's just gonna think it's her fault for not finding a new husband and she's gonna hate me for proving em right. I'm s'posed to be on her side. And now, whenever she talks to family or her friends, she's gonna have to lie. I've made her a liar.

'"Why are you telling me this?" That's what she said: "why are you telling me this?".' He shakes his head. 'I dunno.'

To watch Miles, who always pauses thrice in every sentence to choose each phoneme deliberately, flood with overlapping words and no rehearsal is so foreign it debilitates me from everything but staring. All my bones ache with the need to soothe his.

Mouth contorted and jaw quivering, he looks at me and it couldn't be clearer that I've had it all wrong. He handed me his spinal disks one at a time before I even had the thought. They're piled in my lap like monochrome building blocks along with his ribcage.