man fuck it im gonna start doin wip wednesdays here
Summer is sweet and endless and she has nothing to do but look at me. She's looking at me now, through the sun's glare on her mirror. She shadows the shapes of my mouth, but doesn't put her voice to my words.
My parents are worried about Grace. They think something's wrong with her - I know what it is. Grace knows, too, looking at me, looking through the glare in the mirror. Everything about her is wrong. I could fix her, if she would let me.
Solid, measured knocks. "Gracie?"
"Yeah?" She pulls her braids back to look at her shoulders uncovered. The angle of her jaw. She is trying to see how it matches up to mine.
"Your mother and I are going to go to the mall. Do you want to come?"
I've never been a fan of the sweltering heat of a cracked-asphalt parking lot, nor the chill on my skin in a Macy's. Grace says, "Okay." But she only said that so that she can look away from me. She is a fool. I can be found in anything that can reflect. I watch her in the windows, in silver lockets, in the mirrors she models new boots in. She parades about like a wind-up toy, a ballerina in a music box. Her mother hands her new skirts for the new school year, button-up blouses, low-cut but not whorish, and modest stockings.
The dressing rooms are hidden in the corner, neatly separated by two icons of triangles - one upside and one downside. I follow her to the wrong one, the wrong stall. It's cramped and ill-fitting, somewhat like a body. Grace tries her best to avoid me still. It's a valiant effort, I'll give her that much. But at some point, in a few minutes, maybe, she'll have to turn around and face me.
Grace takes off her tanktop like the accused pushing off concrete slabs. She hisses with impatience at the clasp of her bra and its stubborn claws in her skin, throws it on the bench with more violence than is necessary. Branded into her back it remains, aching, smoking. Cramped and ill-fitting. She itches at it like the fabric is stuck in her, like it still remains subcutaneously and she could pull it away finally, permanently, if she also removed the skin. Her nails are well cared for, and so, won't do the job. I smile at the sound of her bent elbows.
Her pants go too, her keys squeezing free of the claustrophobic pockets and diving with raucous applause to the floor. Her phone is in her purse, because the back pockets are only decorative. Grace doesn't curse. Her words are never ugly. Instead, her lips bend into the shape of: "shit", and then she bends and picks up the keyring. It is unadorned. Why should it be anything else? A key only has one purpose.
For a moment we stand there together, Grace's back to me, my back not quite to hers. She is hesitating, stretching out the moment between one set of clothes and the next. The blouse is slippery and coarse in texture, sends spider legs running over her back. The skirt is of good quality, but takes up in the back, so she is afraid to bend. No pockets.
I ask her if I can see it. She stares at the off-white wall in silence, and then she turns.
"Oh, no, Gracie. That won't do at all." I tell her. "That thing isn't even fit to be a tablecloth. It's see-through, it's itchy on my ribs. It's pushing my skin too close to my bones, the points of my ribs poking at my lungs. It's like a coffin leaking air, sighing its way into the ground."
Her breath hitches. "I don't know what's wrong with me." She's saying to herself, to the mirror, to me. I make a sound - in my mouth it is sympathetic, but in hers it is animal, pained, cornered.
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name change. sorta.
heeyyyoooo. um.. so if any of y'all follow me anywhere else, you might have noticed that i switched up my username. and it's something i had debated on doing here with this blog as well, but realized i have way too many custom tags and i'm nowhere in the mood to go through and change every single one and update links. so this blog will keep the chidoroki name. it's just everywhere else that'll be different. such as...
twitter | youtube | twitch
(don't be fooled, i don't use the latter to stream, just to chat.)
i ramble a bit in the tags about why the "sudden" change amongst other things but.. HSR has taken over my life. so you can also find me here and here if you so desire.
feel free to check out any of those places. it kinda varies where i'm more active these days but this blog will still run as it normally would being anime & manga focused. i may reblog a couple edits from the revs sideblog to here just to have those i really enjoy all in one place but certainly not everything.
(and not that anyone is wondering about the new name if one has bothered to even check, but it's them. each one is so dear to me and i love them. that's all for now.)
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