asphodel
Written by Rajana Chhin
Designed by Julianne Le
Illustrated by Nancy Tran
Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see that person. Sometimes I imagine myself, watched by her. As if she’s leering at my every action, watching with narrowed eyes.
When I walk the path home, I look back — thinking I hear the ghost of her laugh, the quick gasp of air leaving her lungs. Sometimes, she hangs above my head, reaching her pale hand across my eyes.
When I hear her name I feel stilted and wrong. How do they know that person, as if they can see her, too?
Is she not lingering on my shoulder as we speak, dancing across my vision to a melody that I cannot hear?
When I sleep, she rests next to me in my dreams, holding my head in a vice grip. I can’t tell if she’s angry, or sad, or happy. I doze and whisper to her that I am well.
In every word I write, in every step I take, she is right there alongside me. She’s watching the leaves blow past my hair, the late night cacophony of my sobs, and the strained smile of my success.
“Her appetite is voracious, stealing every thought, every touch, every sound and sight I experience. For the dead are hungry and unable to be satiated.”
The one that slips off my face when the cold touch of her electrifies my thoughts.
The coffin that holds my soul dear. The bite-shaped wound in my heart.
The flesh spat out, wet and rotting.
She burns my eyes when I stare above the stars, reaching for an escape. She overtakes the hand that feeds me, coveting what I eat and devour.
Her appetite is voracious, stealing every thought, every touch, every sound and sight I experience. For the dead are hungry and unable to be satiated.
Even more so because I was the one that starved her, the one that killed her. In the depths and pits of my mind, she was there for a lifetime.
Then, gone. Ripped away. She doesn’t exist—not anymore—yet she plagues me. I tore her from the muscles and tendons of my bosom, the sound of separating skin and tissue echoing in the back of my mind. She didn’t scream as I separated our bond, but she lay lifeless, her spirit lingering, clawing at my vessel to stay.
And she did stay there. But she is as hollow as I am vigilant.
Traces of her seem to haunt me and only me, as I pace the grocery aisles on a mundane evening, as I reach the check-out line and see glimpses of her bones in the clerk’s face, as I head home and hear her voice in a song. She’s everywhere and in everything, and no one minds but me. No one knows that I am the haunted killer, the one who can’t escape what I had grieved.
I taste her when the salt of my tears reaches my lips. I seek refuge in the memory of us. I find myself wishing that it wasn’t me that had killed her and left her estranged.
I find myself hoping that she continues to haunt me a little more—savoring the last wisps of her presence. Until there’s nothing left but the cool breeze on a winter night, reminding me of what it was like to feel welcomed home.
Entwined Tales
Illustrated by Nancy Tran
I’ve been tracking it for the past few weeks, and I’ve come to a realization: there’s a sort of pain that’s started to rot my chest. Perhaps it’s been growing for years, having sprouted during those childhood nights when I went to bed with my hair wet and straggly. I used to wake up with hair knotted enough for my mom to eventually stock up on watermelon-scented hair detangler.
The last time I was that careless was probably in middle school. I used to fall asleep in stained blue jeans and faces of foundation, waking up confused as to why the scent of B.O. seemed to linger or why acne began to rupture my skin. During my senior year, I adopted a three-step skin-care routine (due to a sense of biological responsibility rather than the joy of cosmetic rituals). Since I had spent so much time vandalizing my bodily temple, it only felt right to force myself into a sort of ascetic treatment.
I convinced myself that in order to feel more like myself (a feeling which only existed abstractly), I would have to become the purest form of myself. I donated literal pounds of makeup ranging from lipsticks worth less than a dollar to foundations that were funded by
multiple weekly allowances. I gave them away to my friends under a casual guise–Aw, this actually goes so much better with your undertones. Yes, I’m sure! Take it now or I’ll just leave it behind. I became more radiant by transforming into a plain nubile, a process I believed to be a simultaneous interaction between growth and reversion. I worshiped a divine form of nothingness.
With my hair under a strict cleansing schedule and my skin used to biweekly exfoliation, the thing that grew during my years of detangler was forced into hibernation. It lingered right beneath my skin and taunted me every rare occasion I fell short on a World History project or was trapped in a car that echoed with my parents’ scoldings. That ugly warmth that arose with each pang of embarrassment or guilt was egged on by a rot prodding my ribs. If I had thought my high school self to be a juvenile psychotic obsessed with physical appearances, then the person I became following my grandmother’s death must have been her god. Immediately after my grandmother fell ill with the flu and died six days later, I buried myself in a rigorous routine. I was 23 and determined to not miss a single meal prep, barre class, or therapy session.
Photo Credit: cottonbro studio, Pexels