This past week: realising I could live life this way and not die, like Qiu. Beginning with Annie Ernaux and bleeding, unreservedly, into that Saturday night with A. Two nodes in my life I am slingshotting towards.
Tonight, I am listening to this specific cover of Remember You and crying, suddenly and inexplicably. I feel yoked to my romantic self for the first time since I cleaved her clean all those years ago. I sing it quietly to myself, touching my hair and face repeatedly, saying sorry, holding her hand.
This moment feels like a homecoming. A return to a pure, crystal self I thought I had lost. I am recognising her bright body and reaching towards her plainly. I am a sober and forgiving witness to her pain, her grief, my loss, my survival. What it feels like: stepping out of the bounds of a world I had confined myself within in order to survive. Emerging, hand in hand, from the pink wreckage of this self into something green, unknown, liveable. Honouring all the things I have done to save the both of us so we can be led to this moment in time.
I cup my face and it still feels like the soft clay I first laid my hands on back then. I feel tenderness, pity, and pride, amongst so many other things, for the body that has brought me here. I run my hands down my arms and thighs, along the nodes on my own skin that seem so primed for this. I am sensitive to the world again. See: even the air feels like a small storm. I’ve forgotten I could feel this way. I’m remembering the raw yolk of my being. I hear Marceline ring in my head, but what I'm listening to is my own voice calling my own name.
Here I am now, wet and anew. Leaning into the night with the force of this culmination careening behind me, and all my metaphors made real beneath the dark, deepwater sky.
Marceline, is it just you and me in the wreckage of the world?
That must be so confusing for a little girl.
And I know you're going to need me here with you.
But I'm losing myself, and I'm afraid you're gonna lose me too.
This magic keeps me alive, but it's making me crazy,
And I need to save you, but who's going to save me?
Please forgive me for whatever I do,
When I don't remember you.
Marceline, I can feel myself slipping away.
I can't remember what it made me say.
But I remember how I saw you frown.
I swear it wasn't me, it was the crown.
This magic keeps me alive, but it's making me crazy.
And I need to save you, but who's going to save me?
Please forgive me for whatever I do,
When I don't remember you.
Please forgive me for whatever I do,
When I don't remember you.
Da da, da da da da da,
Da da, da da da da,
Da da da da da da