pilate
/
the house seems to circle around you slowly. i circle around you, a wild / animal near a fire. i remember / i would kill for you. i remind myself / it won't be necessary.
If there is anything right in this world, I think, it is the bond between my sister and I. If there is anything that will survive the strain that Adonai’s mystery sickness has put on our family, it will be us: Pilate and Hagar, Hagar and Pilate, as it was always meant to be and always will be. There is no future without her. There is no world of mine she does not rule, no ship of mine she does not sit at the helm of.
If this is love—this thing I feel for her—then I know I will never love anyone else. (If it is better called obsession, I’d rather not think about it.)
She smiles when I kiss her cheek, and says to me: if that’s all it is, I would have gone with you. I laugh. It is the first real laugh I’ve felt in what might be days or what might be weeks, a low, silky sound, free of all the trappings and careful constraints I am usually forced to speak in—it feels good. It feels honest.
(I do not get many chances to be honest anymore.)
“And that is why you are my favorite,” I tell her, and my voice is still loose and warm from the way she has made me relax. Hagar crosses room and sinks down onto my bed. If it were anyone else, they would be chastise for rumpling the blankets I so carefully arranged—but it is her, so I only raise a brow, and saunter over to meet her. My window is closed, but not tightly. Streetlight and moonlight gleams off its perfectly cleaned surface; it pours into my room and across the floor like mercury. When I move to stand in that pool of silver, I am suddenly washed over by a gust of icy wind and the almost-sweet sound of the party in the streets, and despite my dislike for the commoners, I look down upon them and feel something like warmth, a god enjoying the view of his pawns and their wonderful, minuscule lives.
She asks what I was doing. I glance at the rumpled blankets, my journal left open on the desk. (If it were anyone else, closing that would have been my first instinct. But she wouldn't look. I know she would't look. And some part of me thinks, even if she knew what was in it —she would choose me over him.
I rest my head casually only the slope of Hagar's shoulder. The noise and pattern of her breathing is a balm to me: at least someone in this house is alive and well. "Writing. Nothing of importance." It's true. Nothing is of importance anymore, except keeping Adonai where he needs to be. "And what were you doing, ya danaaya? You must come talk to me more often," I add, quietly and perhaps more sincerely than anything else I've said.
One of my snakes uncurls from a knot on top of my head and slithers over Hagar's neck —not nibbling, not hissing, only resting against her skin just as I am.
