︱tape: 02 - hues for a person who has moved away︱

whirs of engine noise disperse into small quavers that heave into seychelles’ sleep; scratched away in the peals of brakes from traffic outside. darkness lightens into a pale blue tone that dyed the white walls, grey bouquets sailed through the overcast sky snipped with platinum light, fluorescent as subway concourse lights where her raucous conversations with kiara once reverberated down an underpass, all their yelling made granular with the glimmer of tiles. awake, her phone casts a white glow as she checks her e-mails and messages only to stare at the last message from derek about the arts collective grant, blue and green speech bubbles of their exchange.

derek/3:57 a.m.: these notes need to be more strategic . aaaargh. fucking kiara of course she would do this

phone face down, colourless bedroom and she thinks about how there were times when joining derek and kiara in their art collective would seem an adventurous fantasy where they walk on no matter what. she rolls onto her back and stares at her ceiling. eventually she pulls herself out of bed, but upon standing she seems unsteady but taking her first step, her feet trample on the hardwood floor but she keeps walking until she could sail on the momentum that carries her, throbbing within the dim room. without kiara here, the apartment grew larger and seychelles would trace the gloss surface of the obsidian island counter in the kitchen, all those stalactites inside her finger would only glide along and at that impenetrable distance she can only watch from. maybe this is what the concept of “the end” will look like, she thought. fingernails pelt at the door. seychelles turns, petrified, but remembers that derek was going to visit. it was 7 am and derek visited often to include her in his orbit of photography and bar hopping in kiara’s absence. he greets her with a breath breaking into a grin, a note of a chuckle. she thought him strange but found him good enough company.

“yo,”

“morning,” she sighs, not enough to yawn. she stretches her arms to remind herself of her joints.

“you staying in again?” derek asks, running his hand through his hair. seychelles thinks he may have actually disentangled a hair or two. dandruff tosses in the air; maybe he is half awake after all. she had a dream where she awoke on a smooth floor dusted in spilled sugar but each grain then stretched themselves into small spears bursting into feathers and hair that littered across the space.