400 days
HOUR 1
I’m ruined against the rotting arch. The two of them are discussing some irrelevant, dead issue, but all I can see are the technicolor lights.
Years back, we had cassette tapes of an idea, ripped up walls with aging masking tape that no one could peel off, his backpack ringing with the heavy keychains of cartoon characters, her cut-out figures, and the chessboard I always brought. It wasn’t much of a chessboard, really: I colored in so many squares, I used it without the pieces too many times, I’d abandon a pawn painted in neon on broken glass to mark my territory.
They usually call this point “losing your mind”, but that already happened, far before we became one pantheon. It happened, probably, when I left the eighth pawn on the doorstep of my grandma’s brownstone as a little farewell, or maybe when we stumbled upon a metal arm with all the flesh still inside.
It was laid on my chessboard— the pink square, but it was red when we got there.
DAY 40
Forty days is nine hundred sixty hours. I read in an old book that prisoners keep track of time to stay sane, but I’m not a prisoner at all, here with them. I used to love the feel of rot, the moss, the shredded paper. It felt so human, but we’re nothing more than talismans (the diminished symbol). The years— days? Water me down, just like when you carve a smooth pawn’s head into a sharp tool, it scratches, it scratches and bleeds.
I love them (the ones here with me), if I think a bit harder, I’ll tell you their names. But we don’t need to think because we love, instead.
DAY 400
I made a pawn out of stone and carved all of our initials into the arch. It was easy enough, see, he made the arch so malleable, the moss curving around my fingers and the dirt falling through my hands. I dug until I found the roll of tape, I showed it to her and she smiled, saying—
“I used to glue strips of tape to the wall so you two would stay longer trying to peel them off.”
He laughed, but it wasn’t funny—
“I tried to take the tape off even when the walls had burnt and there was only brownstone left.”
And only I was left, so I said,
“See, I built the arch out of the shards that didn’t burn.”
Then I could see the shadows of burnt tape, so I put the moss back.