Silent Sorry

to see all that we can be?” she said with a smile. Juno Kowa Calder. My girlfriend; the love of my life, as she inevitably had to be at this age- at twenty. Between a child and an adult, things become confused, but never Juno Kowa Calder. With her black hair darker than your worst nightmares encasing her pure porcelain face with foggy roses for cheeks, she hardly seemed like she belonged here, in this world. Her fingernails were always blue.

  We met at an art gallery. I was sketching a small sculpture by Anish Kapoor, sitting in the corner minding my business, letting everyone walk on by, talking about how they loved this and loved that and how that was like his older works which they saw first before anyone else. Then there she was. Well her beat-up Nikes with untied laces were there. I traced up her thigh-high socks, the red hem of her skater skirt, her nuclear disarmament belly-bar, the mole just above her belly button, navigating the bumps of her knitted crop top, her violent violet velvet chocker, to her perfectly sculpted face. “Sketch Me,” she said. It even sounded like her voice was sculptured for Christ’s sake.

  So here we were eight months later, standing outside a cemetery on a sunny summer’s morning. “Don’t you love when its my turn to pick?” she had this habit of standing feet shoulder width apart with her hands on her hips and a slight arch in her back when she asked rhetorical questions. Don’t ask me why. With this real toothy grin, which would look sinister on anyone else, she took my hand (softest skin in the world, by the way, like she was only born a few minutes ago. Sometimes I think she actually was) and led me into the home of the peaceful (I assume) dead. “See my dear loving boyfriend, can I call you that?” she could drive a monk wild when she played this serious game, “I just assumed I could call you that seeing as you know, we are…bonking…I believe that’s what the kids call it these days. I haven’t filled out the paperwork as yet, but I will send it to your people as soon as possible my dear” she placed a real kiss on my lips, you know, the slow, all of your lips and all of my lips, with a bit of spit, kind of kiss, “boyfriend” she whispered. “We are gathered here today to give the miracle of life” jumping back and thrusting her arms to the sky with all the drama of Shakespeare himself (I half expected a bolt of lightening, even though the sky was a pale comparison to her nails. Blue).

  Juno Kowa Calder was the kind of person you see eating noodles on a train- with chopsticks. Juno Kowa Calder was the kind of person to drink wine in a nursery and water in a club. Juno Kowa Calder was the kind of person who would show up in your dreams unannounced only to watch. Juno Kowa Calder was hardly ever a person, to be honest.

  “No no, I am not Mary and you are not Shelley, together we shall not make Frankenstein’s monster today from graves” then she pulled out her iPod, well really its mine, ‘ours’, she would always correct me. Juno Kowa Calder put her earphones in my ears, giving me a kiss on each side as she did, the space just below my eye; it always sent electricity down my spine. Cemetery Gates started to play. The Smiths were our thing. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve played the vinyl records in my room, drinking brandy and eating sweet and salty popcorn. We would pretend we broke up and we were all torn up inside, and Morrissey was the only one who could quell the pain. I stared at her while the song played. She pulled a funny face. “They were born and then they lived and then they died…seems so unfair and I want to cry” she stuck out her bottom lip and I swear to God at that moment I made it my goal to find out how to liquefy a human being, soul and all, and place them in your heart. I just need her closer than I can ever get her. “So today, we fuck life…not literally because, well, I only like fucking you” her winks were even perfectly sculpted, “we fuck the unfairness of life and we give these poor sonsabitches a second life”.

  Juno Kowa Calder’s smell is nostalgia. You ever catch the scent of something and get all knotted inside because you remember that amazing place when you were a kid, or that moment you thought you were going to die, or when you felt like the king of God himself. Juno Kowa Calder was that smell. I think she knew it too; you never caught her wearing too much perfume or using smelly creams or anything. Just nostalgia and the faint hint of blue.

  We walked around the cemetery hand in hand perusing tombstones like we were buying dinner or looking for a good book. “Perfect” she let out. Juno Kowa Calder’s ‘perfects’ aren’t really ‘perfects’ they’re more of a sound than a word, its like a bubble popping. I dunno. “Hideaki Anno” she looked up at me from the tombstone with a slight frown “sounds exotic, no? He sounds like an admiral, or a captain of some sort. I bet he killed a thousand men, just to be with the woman he loved. He’s buried here because he’s a modest man, you know, he didn’t want all the glory when he was alive, he doesn’t want it when he’s dead. His family doesn’t visit; they’re too busy living it up, thanks to him. His wife’s dead” she put out her arm for me to pull her back up “she committed suicide two days after their son’s graduation”.

  The first ‘I love you’ came two months after the art gallery. My friends in a jazz band and we went to see him play at some random bar. We drank too much, or not enough, its perspective. Anyway, we had a great time, my friend killed it, and so did Juno Kowa Calder, see it was the first time she was meeting all my friends, and they loved her and we were drunk and music filled our heads and hearts and everything was right in the universe. Walking back we walked over this infamous bridge- people jump off to their deaths all the time, even my best friend did, which is what I tell her because I don’t know. “He didn’t need to do something so stupid” she say, and I defend him, cause he’s still my best friend- I say how it wasn’t stupid, it was really brave cause you know I couldn’t and I guess its not easy to do or anything like that. She totally flips out and pushes me on the middle of the bridge. She’s tearing up but Juno Kowa Calder isn’t one to cry, all she keeps saying is how stupid people are and all I keep saying is how brave people are. I don’t know why we’re arguing but we are. I don’t want to lose and Juno Kowa Calder doesn’t lose. “I swear to God Iki if you ever do something so stupid I will bring out my Ouija board and diss your dumbass for eternity. It’s stupid. It’s so stupid. There’s so much love in the world and you may not have it right now, not you personally but you know what I mean, but you will, the universe is not cruel she’s a story teller for fucksake, there’s no drama in having what you want right away, there’s no appreciation either. I mean look at me I never- well I have so much love in my life and look at you, you do, I mean I love you!” pause for dramatic effect the universe said while holding Juno Kowa Calder’s breath there “I love you Iki Desoli. I love you like the last cinnamon bun. Everyone wants you but I want you the most and I will cut a bitch if she even contemplates heating up my cinnamon bun and eating him with a nice cup of earl grey. I love you like blue”

  “Yoshiyuki Sadamoto…tell me Iki do you think his mistress is still looking for him? They had a glorious love didn’t they?” the thing with Juno Kowa Calder is that she really did talk to you, but she made up the responses in her head before you could even process her words. I’m fine with that though, she always looks the most beautiful when she talked. “I mean aaafter the whole child prostitution thing, that was majorly not cool, but the way they didn’t care about anyone else” she left my eyes and focused them on Sadamoto, “just beautiful”. She jumped up and clung with both hands onto my arm, she knew I was a sucker for that kind of shit, you know the whole, you-so-manly-I-physically-cannot-I-must-swoon thing. “Did you do what I asked of you Mr. Man? Did you bring sustenance for my broken soul?”. We set up right next Genyoshi Kadokawa, whom Juno Kowa Calder assured me was the nicest of fellows, even though he owned well over thirty cats and hamsters. My red blanket exploded the cemetery; I didn’t notice the colours till I brought my own. A bottle of red wine,
two peanut butter, fluff and jelly sandwiches, fresh macaroons, fancy cheeses and a baguette that I broke in half to fit into my rucksack. “What’s love?” she managed to squeeze out between the chunks of sandwich and cheese.

  The human body is the strangest thing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve just sat on my bed contemplating just how it’s possible to move one finger. The human body is beautiful. That’s just a fact. See people have this warped sense of beauty now thanks to the media and what not. But see beauty is art and art is feeling and feeling is a language, an ancient one, the one of souls. Every body is beautiful because it’s a home for a soul, you see. That soul speaks through the body, it molds it and grows it, it try’s its best to become it. I’m rambling. Juno Kowa Calder had a freaking amazing body. She had battle wounds from her days of being a hardcore rocker; she had stretchmark’s that made her look like a goddess carrying mountains like they were nothing; she had moles that were holes to other universes. Our souls wouldn’t just talk, they would sing. A fucking sick song. I believed it was entitled Rare Blue.

  Eating with the dead. “I don’t know what love is” she said, wine bottle in hand. The dead become the land. “I don’t think anyone truly knows”. Is that why the grass grows? “Like we know when we’re in love, but we don’t know what love is, you know?” The dead just lying silently in their row. “Its like a mystery. Like God’s ‘fuck you’”. The dead with nothing to do. “Like we can achieve so much and learn so much, but we will never know what love actually is, but fuck, will we be in love, we will be driven by love and inspired by love, by this fucking mysterious force we can never really grasp. Gods just like ‘yep bitches I’m here’. You know?” her smile, was God watching her smile right now in this moment? How many times has he? I wonder if he could give me her smile on a heaven DVD or something, I don’t know what it would take to capture everything about her smile, but only God could. For sure.

  Our first kiss was at a concert. I don’t even know if that’s cliché. I bought tickets to see Blink-182, and one of my friends got totally fucked during pre-drinks, so I just called her and asked. Juno Kowa Calder was always down for spontaneous shit. Juno Kowa Calder never asked any questions. So there we were rocking out to the old bloated Blink, everyone pretending to be younger than they were, everyone pretending tomorrow wasn’t coming, everyone being free. Feeling This starts and Juno Kowa Calder stops. Everyone’s jumping around us but she’s just standing there, so I’m just standing there too, wondering if Juno Kowa Calder is okay. The air is so cold and low. Juno Kowa Calder locks eyes with me and takes my hands in hers. Show me the way you move. Juno Kowa Calder is smiling like crazy; you can see just how sharp her canines are. Fuck it, it’s such a blur. Juno Kowa Calder sways my hands to her rhythm. Your smile fades in the summer. Then we start jumping to everyone’s rhythm. Our breathing has got too loud. Then faster. Take me away from here. Then closer. Your smile fades in the summer. She pulls my hands up in the air with hers and lets go, throwing her head back. This place was never the same again. We’re free. I’ll always be dreaming of you. I grab her porcelain face and kiss her, I swear everything explodes; maybe it was just my heart. So lost and disillusioned. Then they start playing Apple Shamblue. That’s what the songs called right? Fucking Apple Shamblue.

  We eat like the king and queen we are and Juno Kowa Calder lies down with her head on my lap looking at the sweet blue sky encasing us. We do this a lot. Lying. No communication is important in a relationship. Occasionally, I don’t mean all the time obviously, not that anyone’s taking my advice. “Hey baby, I want to get another tattoo soon. You were right. The pain was good” she reaches out for my hand, which I give without even thinking. Her tiny fingers were nothing like a sculptor. “I wanna get one of my sister...skipping…” she squeezes ever so lightly “like when we were kids…why’d she have to be so good with ropes”.

  I was getting a quote tattooed from The Alchemist. Juno Kowa Calder came along, she said for moral support, but people just usually want to see how much it hurts. The pain of a tattoo isn’t really pain though. I mean it hurts for the first few minutes but then it fades away. Everything fades away. You just become aware of you; in that moment; in every moment. It hurts so good. It’s a necessary pain. So there she is with me in this moment of fading, holding my hand and kissing it every now again, I guess when my face gives away something. Eventually out of the gossip between my tattoo artist and my girl, I hear “So um could you maybe tattoo me after, or are you busy, its not anything big”. Stories aren’t meant to be long, they’re meant to be lived. Juno Kowa Calder has a tattoo on a rib just below her left breast. BLUE. Holding her hand she looked to me. Her brown galaxies firing off all the cosmic energy I can just about handle. Her perfectly sculpted voice, all porcelain and pretty. “Be Love Unite Everyone”.