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he is not a good person. of this he is sure.
(but she, she makes him want to be and he doesn’t know what to do with that.)
.
she is sitting on his bed, or perhaps he is sitting on hers. it’s hard to put his mind on it sometimes.
“hello again,” he says, shucks off his jacket. he watches the way her eyes track the motion, almost without her noticing.
“hello,” she says.
it is quite for a moment. he wants to join her on the bed (he wants a lot of things) but she is sitting like a delicate doe atop the bed spread, legs folded as if perched and eyes wide and responsive, and he’s worried that if he makes one wrong move she will vanish.
“i should be sleeping,” she says. “i’m getting married tomorrow.”
“are you?” he responds.
“yes,” she says, but she doesn’t sound sure.
“then why are you here?” he asks her.
she stands in a huff, pacing across the floor of his apartment. he doesn’t know where to rest his eyes-- her bare legs, her disheveled curls, her frantic eyes, her parted lips. he wants her so much he almost can’t breathe with the ache of it.
“i don’t know,” she says. her eyes meet his.
“i can’t stop thinking about you,” he says, like he’s confessing a secret.
she looks like she’s going to say something, but between one blink of an eye and the next, she’s gone.
(i can’t stop thinking about you. i can’t stop thinking about you. i can’t stop thinking about you.)
.
he is sitting in the hospital room, tapping his foot against the linoleum floor. he is with her in the temple again, breathing in the mix of incense and cooked food.
“does it help?” he asks her.
she turns to him with wide eyes, graces him with a smile that spreads across her face and into her eyes. people don’t look at wolfgang like that. it makes his skin itch, makes his heart hurt.
“of course it does,” she says, like it is the only answer. “do you not pray?”
“i wouldn’t know how,” he says.
“i will show you,” she says, takes his hand.
he grasps it tight within his own, feels it's improbable, impossible warmth, never wants to let go.
.
“love in a cluster is the worst kind of narcissism,” someone told him once.
(or maybe that was someone else, someone else’s memory pressing against his mind, crowding into his thoughts, he can’t always tell these days.)
but he looks at kala and he sees anything but himself. she is the smell of jasmine in the summer sun, the laughter caught in the back of your throat and the twirl of dancing limbs. she is everything he never could have imagined wanting.
but want he does.
.
“what are you doing?” she asks him.
he is getting used to her just popping up these days, turning and finding her out of the corner of his eye. he thinks that if this is what crazy feels like, he wishes he had gone crazy sooner.
“what does it look like?” he responds.
she furrows his brow at his harsh tone and he almost regrets his words. it is an unfamiliar feeling.
her hand meets his over the gun.
“be careful,” she tells him.
in some part of his mind, she is there with him. in another, he is with her at work, sorting through vials. he can see rajad across the room, watching her with something of a familiar kind of longing in his eyes. wolfgang sees her life, all laid out neat, nice and safe and so (un)familiar that it aches. he longs, somehow, for the simplicity of her routine, the calmness of her daily prayer and the chaotic bustle of a family that loves her.
(this was never a life for him. his has always been cold and hard and alone, always alone.)
.
“i’m getting married tomorrow,” she says.
“are you?” he replies.
she bites her lip, looks at him with lidded eyes. he tries to remind himself why kissing her would be a bad idea, but he can’t quite remember.
she gasps into his mouth and he can taste her like a memory in the back of his throat.
“what are you doing?” she asks him, voice ragged and deep, as he works his way down her body, pressing kisses against her collarbones, her stomach, her thighs.
“praying,” he says.
(this is as close as he’ll ever get to worship.)
.
he wakes up to an empty bed.
(perhaps it was a dream after all.)
.
“I am not a good man,” he tells her and he means it.
(but he wishes he didn’t, perhaps that should count for something.)
.
“the world is a violent place”
“is it?” she responds. “i did not use to think so.”
“but now you do?”
her eyes are haunted and he wants to reach out and touch her, but this is not his memory after all and he can only lament the anguish in her eyes. she is meant for only happy things and not for him.
(she was never meant for him)
.
“wolfgang,” he hears from beside him.
he closes his eyes, rolls over.
“you’ve been avoiding me,” she says.
“how can i avoid you when you’re not even here?”
“you know what i mean.”
he does.
he’s been taking industrial strength sleep medicine in order to cleanse himself of her.
(she’s still in his head though, she’s always in his head.)
“did you marry him?” he asks.
he is lying in her bed, so close they are almost sharing the same space. he can feel the tickle of her hair against his arm, an exquisite kind of torture.
rajad is on the other side of her, curled towards her as she curls towards him. it hurts more than he was expecting.
he turns away and he is back in his bed in berlin. she tucks herself against his back, pressing herself into him.
"kala," he says and then finds he has nothing else.
(kala. kala. kala.)
(i cant stop thinking of you.)