fiction: boycotting air

boycotting air
by Emma Coaldrake

its 3am and i am not quite certain whether or not i’m on the correct side of the mirror. i do not remember if i am right or left handed. if the moonlight trickling in through my bedroom window is casting peculiar shadows on the wall or if it’s a parlour trick of reflection. i do not remember putting the music on low or lighting these candles or writing lines from hamlet on the back wall of my room, which appears and disappears with the slightest turn of my head, in a direction i cannot ascertain.

i hold my breath.

‘i am boycotting the whole idea of air.’ i whisper to the languid form of the girl lying at my feet. if i turn my head i can see the curve of her hip, her fingertips stretching out over black blankets she reaches for the sharpie at the foot of the bed and crawls to my side

‘black stars,’ i slur, baring the pale skin of my wrists to the wrath of ink. she smiles slightly and instead writes

‘let the things
you love
be your escape’ over faded scars. ‘i want to photograph you,’ i confess.

‘why do you need pictures, when you have scars?’ she mumbles, tracing my lips with her index finger.

i exhale.

‘so much for boycotting the idea of air,’ she chuckles. the notes of her voice making patterns on the folds of my clothing and i hear the break as she inhales again, pressing eyelashes together and moving her lips to words and thoughts i wish she would voice.

‘i think i am lost.’ i say to her serene face.

‘in what?’

‘in you.’

her eyelashes flutter open and she manages once again to embed herself into my veins. she uncaps the sharpie again and reaches for my forearm.

‘my love is messy.’

she scrawls, re-caps the sharpie and throws it behind her.

‘and mine’s too tidy.’ i run my fingers through her hair and i kiss this girl at 3 am, in a room i was not sure that i was even in. and for a moment the whole room disappears, and i do not need to turn my head.