The rain drives down straight in a torrent, and there is no movement in the air. The humidity of the day threatens to devour a person whole. Everything swells and drips and sweats. The wet wood of the teahouse floor catches and shrieks under the soles of his feet despite his best efforts to honor the serenity of the space, but he is anomalous in this place — clumsy and fraught in his distraction and discord.
Alone, he settles onto a cushion at a low table next to a sliding shoji opened halfway to the falling rivers outside. In the distance, fog rises ethereally from the tall forest; everything is vibrant and verdant for miles. His eyes slip against the vast lushness, struggling to reflex and allow the wholeness of the environment to reach his mind to become experience.
He draws a deep breath, consuming what the environment offers — ions and lumber, damp earth, steam, and brewing leaves and spice. Slowly, the life in his chest steadies, and he allows himself to take in the distant roll of thunder and gentle beat of the rain; such balms for the crashing ocean of his thoughts, one stacked against the next like waves climbing atop waves, colossal and imminent.
Tea is poured; he cradles the petite porcelain cup in his hand and watches the heat drift and swirl into nothingness. The room is filled with similar ghosts, and ones less apparent, shrouded behind his eyes in the root of his memory. Discomfort descends as he tips the liquid against his lips. His body burns, not from the tea’s heat, but the flavor it deploys, crashing into his cheeks and down, coursing through channels to his very core, awakening in him vivid ruminations of their last time together and all the things that had gone so devastatingly wrong.
There was a magic that resonated from her that day; he would have set fires to worlds on her whim, but regardless of her heady magnetism, he was scattered like leaves on the winds of a passing storm — battered, used, lawless, and utterly ungovernable.
He watched her animate and create poetry with her voice; the music of it made him yearn and his pulse throb in his neck. The graceful motion of her limbs, the flash of her teeth, the enveloping cast of her eyes — to him, she was a sun around which everything revolved. He was nervous that perhaps he shouldn’t have met her there, where others could see him watching her, where others could see how helpless he was and how melancholy she became when their dialogue began.
As daylight set on the afternoon, their cups emptied threefold and their conversation turned and wound; it traveled, heightened, faded, and crescendoed again. He talked so long and so hard, his cadence little more than a whisper, a consistent low utterance that forced her to lean close, so he could study the movement of her face and respire the totality of her presence.
Their interaction was a shadow dance, invisible but persistent, and she was so practiced, raw, and unflinching. It sparked uncertainty and insecurity in him, conjuring an internal fight response that saw him retract whenever her words drew close. He could see her frustration mounting, but still he wove webs of words around her, incapable of allowing truth or sincerity to breach the wall between them.
Was this his nature, then? He wondered as he weaved. A superior craftsman of hollow narrative, vapid and devoid of substance, delivered impeccably with the utmost charm and articulation. His casual exterior locked him down like an impenetrable skin to hide away the truth of his innermost cogitations that revealed a coarseness and bitter indifference, melding with artificial confidence, which served to discredit any shreds of sincerity he managed to squeeze through.
All the while, she hammered him with an open vein, her truth pouring forth — a font bubbling over, an unstoppable flood that quenched nothing, but sparked his guilt. She pulled and implored him, testing roads and avenues, bright paths and dark corners. Her tone calibrated, her approach hardened and softened; he could feel the war raging inside her to pull him out, to draw him forth. By the end, her exasperation was so pronounced, her throat so desperate that he could feel the threads of her heartstrings like fingernails ripping and tearing at the inside of his mind.
As night descended, the teapot emptied and dried, the last drops of pleasure and relief spent, giving way to an uncomfortable and limitless desert with unremarkable sameness in every direction.
He could see her hands trembling in the warmth of newly lit lanterns and sconces. The pause and hush between them stirred the cauldron of emotion she had brewed in him. Perhaps, in the silence, he could hear her, but his collar was so high, his boots were so stiff, and his gloves were so tight. He was bound and captive in his subcranial castle. Unable to allow his throat to form the right words or his mouth to return her magic.
He remembers pressing his lips to her cheek before she departed that day — her skin was cool and tear-dampened. He watched her go as a million stars appeared in the sky, as a million precious moments passed between strangers they would never know, but their moment had ended in a world that would never see another sunrise.
The rain lessens, the thunder quiets, and still the day draws darker, the cloud of memory a pervasive overcast in his reflections. There, in the teahouse, he is unmade and naked in his vulnerability and untouchable in his isolation.
He allows the tea to become tepid; there is no joy in its consumption. Outside, the breeze whips leaves into conversation, and birds commune in song with an ease only the natural plane can elicit so perfectly and adeptly, without complication, motive, or simulation. In spite of himself, he smiles at the simplicity of it all.
“I should have told you,” he whispers.
“I should have.”
Author’s Note: This vignette is about love, of course, as most of my stories are, with overtones of passion and desire, punctuated by natural elements/themes, but moreover, it’s about how poorly humans tend to communicate. We’re often so wound up in our own minds — our own pain and turmoil, that we forget how to listen to one another and say the things that are most important.
Everyone carries with them unique agendas, opinions, secrets, stresses, hopes, and fears. When was the last time you sat down with someone you love and really talked about any of those things plainly? Many times, we miss moments and chances to share the truth with those we care about most. In this story, our protagonist misses his chance. Let this be a cautionary tale against missing yours.
-RDP
