THE WHITE ROSE PAINTED WITH BLOOD

xvi - いちごの雨🍓🌧

🍓🌧

[ the boy's pov ]

i flip through your old sketchbook from 2002, when you were younger. i watch bygone ages flash by, suspended against faded winter skies and falling softly, softly, softly.

i watch your history roll past like those young days, hurting days, screaming days, celadon days

i flip through sketches and paintings and drawings half colored in, spilled with watercolor splashes and staining the cracks in this heart of mine, this heart you made alive again; colors streaking down my skin and bones and reaching the tips of my fingers to keyboards i want to compose songs about you from, songs of spring and summer and autumn and winter and flyinghair&whispers.

i flip through orange fish rippling against the fabric of misty green water in an abandoned bronze pot, rusting + planes streaking waves through the sky creating ocean waves that fade when the wind rises + ravens fading into red skies + faraway moons + shrieking sirens + venus dreams, venus dreams- until i reached THAT picture:

TITLE: STRAWBERRY RAIN (🍓🌧) [いちごの雨]

and the drawing becomes a poem scribbled in my veins:

{ there are strawberry raindrops blooming bursting shaking glistening dripping from your eyes & staining fairy floss clouds a crimson white & melting darkness like ice cream on your 19th birthday, (いちごの雨/いちごの雨/いちごの雨/いちごの雨/いちごの雨) [🍓🌧] /DRIP/DRIP/DRIP/ f-f-f-fading d-d-d-dying COMING ALIVE from those celadon / strawberry / lemon / blissful days of SHREDDED PAPER SHATTERED GLASS BLOODY BOTTLES & MAKING US WHOLE & EMPTY AGAIN / back to the days when we were alone & missing pieces because we broke because we LOVED ; makes me remember and reminisce / OF THE PAIN & DESPAIR & 1000 LONELY NIGHTS (千夜;SENYA) TASTING THE STRAWBERRY RAIN FALLING FROM SEPTEMBER STARS / ON DON'T YOU REMEMBER TOO? / don't you remember the winters of venus freezing springs of venus blooming summers of venus burning autumns of venus falling? rising? venus dreams exploding faraway & painting the pages of this sketchbook with fleeting M O M E N T S of F O R E V E R because humanity is unimaginable INSIGNIFICANT & astronomically WORTHLESS / we're made of networks of stars & electrons & protons & neutrons & atoms & elements & chemicals & toxic gasses sketching our uranium veins with strawberry rain rusting our bones / WE'RE MADE OF cells & tissues & muscles & bones & hatred & pain & pasts we run from & moments of いちごの雨 & colors of 赤 / オレンジ / 黄色 / 緑 / 青い / 紫の / ピンク / ベージュ / 茶色 / グレー / 白い / 黒 / & A MILLION DREAMS TO FILL OUR HEARTS FOREVER WITH COURAGE, COURAGE & moments of strawberry rain & solace & faces that scream forever, ALL SKETCHED IN OUR DNA LIKE UNIVERSES, like skateboarding down sunset aves and cherry blossoms of weekends spent falling in love in tokyo of school uniforms & red scarves BILLOWING like WINGS of the ravens in our souls / WE ARE SO FARAWAY LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROZEN IN MAGIC AND SORCERY AND INFINITE VOIDS WEHRE WE CAN SEE EVERYTHING BUT CAN'T DO ANYTHING / we're like venus, freezing blooming burning falling rising, a pinprick in a world of eternal pinpricks with light years between them, because when we look up at the sky we're watching a history that was there before we were, because we are lost on blue sound trains watching strawberry rain streak and bloom into pink bubbles that look like bugglegum against glass windows that hold the world / we arechaotic like this poem, and lonely.

/ because once, we were never alone. but now i feel so lonely with you- could you be lonely with me?? / }

🍓🌧

"i really like this one,"

you look up idly from the poem you're reading. we're hidden between bookshelves that smell like autumn, autumn of a bygone age, a distant era.

"which one?"

"strawberry rain... why did you draw it?"

"oh that... i... i don't remember,"

"oh?"

"yeah... maybe that's why. maybe i was trying to remember something i'd forgotten when i drew it,"

"i see,"

"why do you like it?"

"well... i can't describe it... i'll write a poem about it someday. i'll show you then,"

we didn't need words. we just smiled and the message was conveyed. and i wonder, if you were thinking the same thought as me, at that moment. that once, we were never alone. but now i feel so lonely with you- could you be lonely with me?