un
Aliyah swears that she didn't mean to fall in love. She swears it in the apartment that she wakes up in every morning. She swears it at the real-life crockery pot that Mira has perched on the windowsill they share. She swears it when she wakes up on foggy mornings and realizes just how wrong she was about the girl that she didn't mean to fall in love with. The mischief in Mira's eyes still glimmers sometimes. The matches Aliyah once lit and swallowed have no place in this happy life. Explosions, implosions, immolations are all words that have lost their meanings to Aliyah because she hasn't encountered them in so long. Paris does not have room or time for arson, and neither does Aliyah's heart. She still goes to the coffee shop every morning. She still works on her laptop. She still waits for the days when Mira walks in after work, soaking from the rain or sweating from the sun, and sits down at her table. She still waits for the days when Mira leans in and whispers, I'm Mira. I'm Mira, and I think I'm a little in love with you. Of course, she's a lot in love, but that doesn't carry as much nostalgia. Of course, of course, of course.
deux
What is life without simple belonging? It's nothing, Aliyah knows. Life without simple belonging is nothing. Life without simple belonging is a life of criticizing yourself for not having simple belonging even as you search for it. Life without simple belonging is nothing, because life without simple belonging is life without Mira. And life without Mira is summer storms. Life without Mira is Porsches running over hearts. Life without Mira is secondhand smoke that you inhale just to prove yourself. Life without Mira is not worth living, Aliyah thinks, Aliyah supposes, Aliyah knows. Those narcissistic, impressionistic, beautifully wicked liars have not touched her mind in ages. Those painful heartbreaks of the past will stay there, tucked into dusty shelves and haunted corners, though the ghosts themselves have been banished.
trois
Jana was a wild summer storm that swept through the world in a whirlwind of pure, graceless, claws-and-teeth magic. Aliyah knows now that she did not want it. She did not want it then, and she does not want it now. Aliyah knows now that lust is not the same as love. Aliyah knows that implosion is not the same as affection, and that anyone who makes you swallow a match should burn along with you. Overwhelming sugar is an acquired taste, but Aliyah loves it now. She loves tea and short black hair and dark brown eyes. She loves silk dresses and soft giggles and love so gentle that she sometimes mistakes it for simple kindness. Aliyah loves it all, loves Mira, loves everything about this girl who is so unlike anyone she has ever known. Mira has mended Aliyah's cherry pink crockpot and now, against all odds, it sits on a windowsill in Paris. Mira has never once asked Aliyah to set herself aflame. Mira has taught Aliyah more in the past three years than Aliyah has known in her entire life. Mira is wearing Aliyah's grandmother's ring on her finger. It's a promise, for the future. It's a secret wish. It's crockery pot plus porcelain vase (pronounced väz) until the end of time. It's forever stretched out before them like the Paris road, wet with rain and dotted with stoplights, street lamps, tire tracks. Painted with the footsteps of two girls in love.
ESTÁ A LER
crockery pot heart ✓
Conto[gxg] In which Aliyah meets a girl at a coffee shop who is at once nothing and everything like she expected.
