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You make a mess of me, is what I wish I could tell you. You make me something I’m not.
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A hand, five loving fingers wrapped in callouses, spreading the expanse of her throat, down her arms, the loving caress — those same five fingers, drifting towards her open lips, and —
Hitoka’s breath leaves her mouth on a gasp, her eyes snap open the same. The hand is her own, smooth, no experience spiking balls or treating girls like precious objects. The only thing that her body carries are some bruises and the memories of where they came from.
Kanoka made her, made her new, made her real. Wrote her worth into her skin, created a poem of her. Left indents in her flesh, handprints on her soul. Hitoka wants to think she made Kanoka, too, shaped her gut and her arms — stranger, fugitive, hand, chest, heart — what would it have taken to turn one night to two, three nights, four? Make a night the morning after? Every morning further? She is only a body. She will only ever be a body.
Hitoka bites at her lips until they’re red, irritated, only the thinnest layer of skin to be broken left on them. Would Kanoka lick the blood from her, if Hitoka was to rip herself open? Would Kanoka like the taste?
She picks up her phone from the nightstand, opens to the same contact page she left it on before. Her finger hovers over the call button, such a simple thing. Would Hitoka be able to recreate even a sliver of last night, to hear that voice, even beyond lust-stricken tones, weaving fantasies? A bridge between moments, states of wear?
She presses the green button, neon, no longer light like the sheets she was placed on, laid an art piece. Hitoka is not who she was in high school. She had promised herself, all the pessimism and anxiety that kept her, that she will never let it define her again.
First ring, second ring, third…
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The fear of it all, that Kanoka knows she will never be what she was supposed to— all delicate and fragile like Hitoka, that she will never be small and soft, something to cradle and treat gently.
Hitoka had treated her gently anyway, amongst all of Kanoka’s gangly limbs and rough skin, callouses covering every part of her hand, and it was nice, for once in her life, to be red not because of a ball. Red because someone pulled her blood to the surface. Broke her arteries. Made her something she thought she could never be ( lovely, treasured ).
What fragile care, what hopeful eyes, what a voice; god, what a voice.
Kanoka only dreams to make Hitoka fit into her, in her, in her shadows and those same gangly limbs, in the palm of her hand. Hitoka was the warmest kind of frigid, still anxious in the cracks of her, the damage that cannot be stitched together by tape or stapler. What noises Kanoka could pull from her; she wishes she had a recording, now, something to bottle and relive over and over, become accustomed to. Hitoka’s smell, her sensation. The temperature of her.
If only Kanoka had known how easy it was to break her down, build her up — she now only has bits and pieces of a night haze . The feeling of sheets under her legs. Skin on her tongue. Nails scraping over her scalp. She can now only lay about and think — mouth, teeth. Fingers, scars. Her. Her .
How hard would it be to call? To remember those seconds, minutes, the moments staking claim? Kanoka may not have a bottled memory but she does have a number, leftover from high school, something that never changed. Something that she’s glad stayed the same.
One call. One note. How easy would it be? To find the courage she now has on court, to make it wanton and gentle, like she wants to be —
A vibration from her bedside table. Kanoka listens, lets it sound its shrill tone across her skin like someone else’s touch. Her hand moves before her mind does, palm finding the phone, finger finding accept before reject is even an option. A crackle sounds over the line.
“Kanoka?”
“Hitoka…”
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But for all of it, for all of what you make of me, I like it better. I like who I am when I’m with you.