sevenwise

active 20m ago

Hanna wears beautiful dresses and holds half-full glasses. Her hair is blonde now, and she’s grown into her teeth. Every weekend is a new concrete building to watch flashing lights. My eyes glow fever-pink from the other side of the screen, where I watch her fluttery camerawork. The music is an ugly, writhing animal. I turn the volume down until it’s no louder than my pulse.

In some blurry, barely there frames, she looks like my childhood best friend. When the lights slice across her face just right, you can see where I broke her nose when she was eight. I was ten, but she was bigger than me, so it was a fair fight. She cried because of the blood, and I cried because I was sorry. There’s a picture somewhere. Smiling gap-toothed with a pillow of thick, white gauze across the middle of her face. Me frowning beside her.

I can't remember what she sounds like. If she ever speaks or sings or screams, the music swallows it all. And quiet moments don’t move. She’s on season 2 of Severance. She’s hiking in a far-away forest. She’s reading The Body Keeps the Score. She's going by Johanna now.

I wonder if she dreams about the sound of bone crunching. I still do.


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