︱tape: 02 - clouds flaked in blue︱

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, it tramples 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. “sheesh, i guess i could really be a neet at this point huh?” seychelles places her hand over her forehead and thinks the gesture to be melodramatic. “well, better idle than making mistakes as they say,” he replies. she immediately sets her hand down aware she’s in a show where both characters play off each other’s lines. derek then shrugs saying that cleanliness is a step in getting hired. this comment confuses her as she looks around the kitchen absent of any crumbs or unwashed dishes but imagines derek would be the kind of person to find the slightest thing amiss. she knows he is only trying to help. his attempts at compassion are clumsy at best. last summer he found a baby sparrow in a park which couldn’t yet fly. when he grabbed the bird, it moved its head in every direction and she thought he might squeeze it to death. his grip seemed soft and yet there was something rigid almost as if he was holding onto a cylinder that this baby bird was stuck in but as he started to release his hands the sparrow wrenched itself free and decided to fly away. seychelles found it slightly endearing, like a shy romantic comedy protagonist who fumbles but seems genuine. probably the kind of person who aims to be a knight, hard and graceful. she slapped derek on the back for consolation and kiara only laughed,

“what the fuck, man. what were you gonna do if you brought it back?”

“probably bring it back dead,” seychelles replied.

“yeah, yeah, now are we going out to the new bbq place or what?” derek remarked, already moving ahead. he always pushed himself forward. every single moment, he hurried to make every next step towards another place. kiara blamed it on the fact that he watched too many films whose sole defining scene was someone saying ‘we have to move forward’ and then they charge on towards whatever third act awaited them. kiara thought things in a circular fashion rather than linear. she liked movies where moments seemed to flit between lush colours and all of a sudden, those minutes in a scene felt like an eternity as she showed the seychelles the kind of image that could dissolve everything as its light could wrap the walls from the screen around them until they too could be a part of that world.