DRABBLES!  ACCEPTING!

     “you… aren’t doing that well either.”

what a dangerous game.  kyara fixes them with a look, one of needle sharp eyes and a frown that speaks like every threat written inside of her skin.  harsh, but not the napalm it could have been.  faint smoke is a humbling effect to every would be chef.  where the ingredients seem to be turning darker than they ought to be, her nervous pushing with a spatula of the eggs within the frying pan is far more endearing than words could imply.  seyoon watches her with slight nervousness.  dragging their fingers over the cutting board, slightly cooled with water used to wash it off from the vegetables that seyoon sliced.  

poorly, admittedly.  just as the eggs she broke and then cursed at, taking bits of shell out one, by one, by one.  fair in the trading of their poor skills.  after a moment, kyara holds her hands out.  

       “shut up.  vegetables.  cheese.”

at least the latter was shredded fool proof.  she pours them all together onto the eggs and frowns against the slow work to fold them over.  the eggs break almost immediately.  cracking along their dark brown back, a low curse spilling from kyara’s mouth as she smashes everything down.  it looks almost more scrambled, now.  not an omelette, a strange sort of mess.  seyoon peers at it for a moment as she shifts it from heat and sets it to the side, on a cool burner.  snapping the other off.  

they stay in silence.  watching it, as it continues to cook, before a sigh leaves her and a low rumble, them.  

and then –

smoke, from the oven, as spanish and hangul fill the air in a flurry of cursing, of furious words where they scramble together.  oven, pad, ripping the blackened potato chunks out to throw into the sink.  a turn off smoke alarm makes no sound, already batteries removed, hanging from wires as seyoon grips her hip, and she shoves herself almost fiercely against their arm.  

despite themselves, seyoon starts laughing.  soft and delicate.  where kyara can’t help but join in as her eyes wet, and her hand shoves over her mouth.

     “we fucked it.”  seyoon says.

           “we sure did.”  comes the agreement, rich and warm.  “let’s fucking eat.”

DRABBLES!  ACCEPTING!

bone to flesh, to skin to skin – collisions.  sudden.  bruises blossoming beneath knuckles.  blood splatters a ricochet over walls, floor.  a grunt bursts from between cracked lips.  pearly teeth.  sneering, colliding, shoulder to belly.  hot breath as they bend over.  fist into hair.  bite, sharp, hard.  teeth into spine into neck into ache ache ache blood BURSTING into mouth.  acrid burning down throat through stomach pooling.  seyoon snarls.  fingers over forearms.  taking weight over shoulders, rolling back.  spine to ground but boy over body.  a weight. a drop.  collision.  curses as they roll back up.  he spits his language and dodges the blow.  not the second.  not the sudden fist into the throat.  wet from his mouth.  fingers on his lungs.  ribs.  bruising bones and cracking flesh.  tendons stretched.  to ground, stay, blow after blow after blow after blow–

hair rips out of skull.  strands against dark skin.  boot heel to thigh, inner markings, a curled growl.  straddling. pinning.  one heaves in and the other heaves out, hard.  feral eyes to eyes.  blood dripping upon one another.  fingertips rise.  two extended.  thumb up.  the others curled.  as the extension touches temple and lingers there for a moment.  something like smile, like teeth and gums.  like tongue beneath pink molars.  like-

     “bang.  i shot you down.”

DRABBLES!  ACCEPTING!

     “my boyfriend took me here.”

or perhaps not to this beach, exactly.  seyoon’s not certain of the name now, a small shard of the memory that they were happy to sacrifice to keep everything else, from the way that he smiled to the softness of sand, the lick of water against their thighs, chest, neck.  sleeping on a towel distantly, drifting, when gabriel was rubbing hands down their back and soothing them all the deeper.

it’s a bit different now.  dressed not for the beach, but for sitting on the hood of her car with food between them both.  mostly for karen to eat.  seyoon ignores nearly all of it, beyond the milkshake that they hold and the fries that they dip within it on a methodical peace.  dip, chew, swallow.  sip.  echo again, and again, under the eyes of a woman who doesn’t know their teeth to food lifestyle.  

      “it’s nice.”

but she smiles all the same.  

            “yeah, it is.  reminds me of...”

her shoes kicked off into the sand, as she stretches and lays back over warm metal.  head to the windshield.  sunglasses ever so slightly askew.  her mouth forms the words of a story about being a child, or perhaps older -- the age is unclear, it doesn’t matter -- and seyoon listens.  falls into the world she makes.

DRABBLES!  ACCEPTING!

he’s a split open wound in an alleyway filled with spilling garbage bins and the vomit of previous occupants.  a bubbling from the lips, the nostrils, where blood is a river instead of a stream.  broken bones the spears for organs.  no outside puncture needed – just a collision of fists, of the sharp edge of a boot heel.  bruises a promise of the worse that lies so deep beneath.  rib cages are weapons too.  they make every breath sound like a whistle.  knives through lungs, tissue paper to water.  junseok counts every single wheezing attempt that this creature gives.  how his fingers feel like maggots at her boots, a wet thing to be shaken loose and kicked at.  rolled onto stomach.  

a spray of red paints the ground.  near purple beneath the humming neon lights.  

these are the gifts of violence.  of her foot grinding into his spine, fingers in his hair pulling hard to arc a neck backwards, out, for nails to drum against.  shaped as coffins.  is there an irony here that he may appreciate, just before they begin to dig in?  death at the hands of a reaper.  where his skin parts, his trachea rends.  carotid and jugular arteries exploding as fireworks to paint acrylic  and slip beneath nail beds.  as ribbons, the chunks that hang on tendons and sheaths of skin from her nails.  as gore in the way that he gushes an ocean.  shivering, undulating.  fighting the inevitable with fingernails breaking on the ground.  tearing to the end of the bed.  

these are the acts of pitiful things in their final moments, junseok thinks.  not a meal.  not a gift or a mistake.  just a settling of her bones.  something to watch until he grows still, and her nerves find a peace in the slow wheezing of air from deflating lungs.  turning on heels.  wiping fingers on walls as she vanishes into the night time, leaving his cadaver a gift for the next vagrant to wander this way.  no genetics to catch her.  

why not let someone else see?

DRABBLES!  ACCEPTING!

she’s falling asleep.  no surprise, little expectation for anything otherwise.  only one mind within this space of sheets and silken nightgowns feels the claws of insomnia dragging it always, outwards, into the space of thought and unrest.  jeannie’s eyes drift distant when her voice begins to sink.  as fingers turning a radio down.  slow, dribbling drop of her soft tongue all the lower, lower, until they break into incomprehensible murmurings and the slow grind of a yawn.  junseok rests fingers upon her back.  moving them upwards, downwards.  a slow, cautious path that soothes her all the deeper.  lets her eyes turn into slits and then close all the more, drifting into sleep with her mouth parted.  her fingers forming into small fists against the sheets.  

as she rests, a singular eye keeps careful watch over her.  from the motion of moonlight over her skin to the sounds of cars upon outside asphalt streets, and onwards.  junseok loses to thoughts.  but never draws fully away from the sleeping figurine besides her breast.