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She looks at you with such earnestness. She is afraid like you were afraid.
Now you are just tired.
“Tell me what feels like,” she says. Her annunciation is deliberate. She is afraid—not of what you might tell her but what it will mean. For the both of you. She is holding you like she has avoided holding you before, her hands linked behind your neck like a sling to a broken elbow, holding your head above the water endlessly rising within your lungs. “Don’t hide this for me.” She is putting the responsibility upon herself.
Your eyes are screwed shut and she is still too bright from behind your eyelids. The headache it gives you almost helps. A yell, guttural and strained, bubbles up from your throat and this time your teeth clench against each other instead of biting your tongue hard enough to bleed sludge. You fall into a fit of coughing. Kanaya presses her corpse-cold palm to your spine as you shake. In touching a damp temple to her cheek, you feel her jaw clench, unclench, clench again. She is holding your cremation-colored body like a private rendition of the Pietá and you know it is making her uncomfortable. You wipe nothing away with a trembling hand against your mouth, a habit from dry heaving, and sit up in her arms as best as you are able.
You kiss her to push past the fears of pink and red, of colors and quadrants, to tell her that she will not lose you. Not to this, or to kindness. You’ll be there for her like she is here for you but you know behind your pursed lips that she loves you not despite this but despite herself. She is an undying martyr, Mary ascended. But you are undying, too. You twist your fists into the neat fabric of her blouse and fight against another wave with a burning cry and her expression is less pained this time. You keep crying, screaming through the night when you feel yourself losing sensation in your fingers. Kanaya Maryam holds you. Kanaya Maryam does not shush you. She listens to every agony you pour from your soul as you try to bloodlet the curse and she holds you and when the wailing wains you kiss her between fits. Her mouth is dripping black but her fangs are clean. You have stopped drinking and you have allowed yourself to be held and you look her in the eyes when she says she loves you and for that you absolve yourself of the guilt of needing her.
These are the worst nights and she takes them, like all things, head on and full of grace.
Now you are just tired.
“Tell me what feels like,” she says. Her annunciation is deliberate. She is afraid—not of what you might tell her but what it will mean. For the both of you. She is holding you like she has avoided holding you before, her hands linked behind your neck like a sling to a broken elbow, holding your head above the water endlessly rising within your lungs. “Don’t hide this for me.” She is putting the responsibility upon herself.
Your eyes are screwed shut and she is still too bright from behind your eyelids. The headache it gives you almost helps. A yell, guttural and strained, bubbles up from your throat and this time your teeth clench against each other instead of biting your tongue hard enough to bleed sludge. You fall into a fit of coughing. Kanaya presses her corpse-cold palm to your spine as you shake. In touching a damp temple to her cheek, you feel her jaw clench, unclench, clench again. She is holding your cremation-colored body like a private rendition of the Pietá and you know it is making her uncomfortable. You wipe nothing away with a trembling hand against your mouth, a habit from dry heaving, and sit up in her arms as best as you are able.
You kiss her to push past the fears of pink and red, of colors and quadrants, to tell her that she will not lose you. Not to this, or to kindness. You’ll be there for her like she is here for you but you know behind your pursed lips that she loves you not despite this but despite herself. She is an undying martyr, Mary ascended. But you are undying, too. You twist your fists into the neat fabric of her blouse and fight against another wave with a burning cry and her expression is less pained this time. You keep crying, screaming through the night when you feel yourself losing sensation in your fingers. Kanaya Maryam holds you. Kanaya Maryam does not shush you. She listens to every agony you pour from your soul as you try to bloodlet the curse and she holds you and when the wailing wains you kiss her between fits. Her mouth is dripping black but her fangs are clean. You have stopped drinking and you have allowed yourself to be held and you look her in the eyes when she says she loves you and for that you absolve yourself of the guilt of needing her.
These are the worst nights and she takes them, like all things, head on and full of grace.
