asphyxia

by Yuna Kang

Asia Pacifica girl is standing still, neck crooked narrowly, gazing at me from the unlit corridors of our old rooms.

I used to love Rella. I didn’t anymore. I can’t explain what happened exactly, except that it was the usual things: boredom, depression, ennui, unwashed cups left by the sink. I can’t explain whose fault it was precisely, except that it wasn’t mine.

We had lived in Monterrey for the longest time, ostensibly operating a bookstore, but really we just lived there to walk. At the best of our days, we would link arms in stride, awed at the morning fog, giggling at pooping seagulls on the shore.

On the worst day, Rella took me to the end of the boardwalk.

“See right there?” and it was a white and red lighthouse, stony base erect, white waves crashing at its waist.

“Hmm.”

“Look again,” her voice was unusual in that it was like gravel, it was much deeper than the natural feminine intonation. I liked to think she sounded like a starry blanket…something to wrap over our shoulders, like some belladonna shawl or otherwise, but…nevertheless.

I blinked, and the top part of the building vanished. It struck me then that there was no lighthouse, just some eroded core, overwrought with barnacles and starfish and distant sea matter.

“That is like us,” Rella said sadly. And then she walked away from the lookout.

When Rella died, I (in dark veil and designer tears) thought that no one could have done better. The pews were packed with mourners. People honestly mourned the woman, even as they did not miss her. All relatives from her estranged family were there, the ones who said she would go to hell and burn and die for promiscuous, misgiving, desires. Her mother even threw herself over the body, screaming, begging God in Bisaya to bring-her-baby-back. It was quite a scene.

And then I was packing up and moving. Nothing really tethered me to Monterrey, not really. I have some crackpot theory that us Asians, we love the cold, we love waters, we love to see humid mists rise up from kelp-laden streams. And perhaps it is a little true, but it is less genetic than cultural, surely. And I wasn’t even really Asian anyway, (Thai mother, distant lady; white-manaical-military dad), so it didn’t matter. I was ready to go home. People thought I was mourning, that I could not stand the Bay anymore because my light-and-love was gone. It was only half-true.

But that day when I was boxing (and unboxing) things, rolling tape over crackling cardboard sides, I saw her. Rella. My love. Her face had been wiped almost clean of its features, other than a puncture for her nose, like someone had stuck their thumb into rising dough. It was like putty, and I looked up.

And I remembered how she died, (head cracked open on I-80 asphalt; causing iration amongst commuters for hours), and I remembered how they took me to see her body. “I don’t want to see it,” I told the police, but I did.

I don’t remember it much, but I remember that they had these clean jars full of her offal, brains and vital liquids teeming out. Her body had snapped open like an egg, and all the yolky goodness was scraped off the pavement. My light, my love. I could see a shard of vodka glass winking at me from inside the sink; they had rinsed it away from her lungs.

I could have touched those remnants forever. When I pressed my thumb into an indistinct container, (the coroner screamed), I only lifted it to unwrinkled forehead. All of Rella’s memories, gone. All of the allocations of our love and hatred, gone.

I had moved my thumb to my forehead, (blood opening the third eye), and then to my tongue. The coroner was grabbing me then, screaming, swearing at the errant police officers (they had brought me here? They had brought me here, and why?) I remember the coroner said:

“We don’t need an ID. I have Ms. Torres’ teeth. We didn’t need an ID-”

…and the world was like some grey empty haze. When I saw Rella in that unlit corridor, I thought she hated me. But really I could not tell.

I did eventually move away.

Sometimes I see Rella still, especially when I drive, I see her body hitting the windshield, bouncing off of cars like a pebble thrown into a river…but it’s okay. She looks at me when I brush my teeth, stone-face gazing, dark hair unbound to her waist. It’s okay.

I’m not mad, and she is not mad. She doesn’t stick around because she is mad. It’s more like, well, when we were first young and in love, we did a road trip together. And I remember scream-singing ABBA,  running through silver-gold wheat, bringing up fresh bouquets of wildflowers to serve to my love. It wasn’t a love that lasted by any means, but Rella smiled then, and she said it was the happiest she had ever felt, ever.

And such love has the power to defy the limitations of death and time, they say. It didn’t matter how it ended. If we loved each other with that much tenacity once, then the echoes of that passion reverberate through time, infinite starlight, glittering for centuries after its core has gone to dark rot.

Like some half-dead lighthouse, our bodies return to the shore. Sometimes our tethers to others sour, our connections rot, and it’s okay. I am standing with Rella at the boardwalk, looking at the carcass of our memories, and then I blink. I am picking up a stone from the beach; I present it to my lady love. I blink, and Rella leaves my bathroom mirrors. I blink again; she finds a new home in my bedroom corner.

She is holding my hand; she wraps her scarf around my neck.

“Mira-”

Photo of Yuna Kang

BIO: Yuna Kang is a queer, half-deaf, Korean-American writer based in Northern California. She loves postcards, crows, and cats. Yuna is also the recipient of the 2024 New Feathers Award.