This Is How You Lose the Time War

by Amal El-Mohtar

Red likes to feel. It is a fetish. Now she feels fear. And eagerness.

Will you see me? Imagine me waving, in case you don’t; I’ll be too far off for you to see my mouth. Just kidding. I’ll be long gone by the time the wind turns right. Made you look, though, didn’t I? I imagine you laughing too.

“And then we’d be at each other’s throats even more.” Oh, petal. You say that like it’s a bad thing.

Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.

Humans need marks to strive for—but imperfect systems decay. So we build them ideals. Change agents climb upthread, find helpful strands, preserve what matters, and let what doesn’t fall to dust: mulch for the more perfect future’s seed.

(Adventure works in any strand—it calls to those who care more for living than for their lives.)

It is difficult—it is very difficult, to befriend where you wish to consume, to find those who, when they ask Do I have you still, when they end a letter with Yours, mean it in any substantive way.

It’s amazing how much blue there is in the world, if you look. You’re different colors of flame: Bismuth burns blue, and cerium, germanium, and arsenic. See? I pour you into things.

every evening I see a red sky bleed over blue water and think of us. Have you ever watched this kind of sunset? The colours don’t blend: the redder the sky the bluer the water, as we tilt away from the sun.

It’s mine. I am careful with what belongs to me.

I like you to know, with my words in your mouth, the places and ways in which I think of you. It feels good to be reciprocal; eat this part of me while I drive reeds into the depth of you, spill out something sweet.

Red, I love you. Red, I will send you letters from everywhen telling you so, letters of only one word, letters that will brush your cheek and grip your hair, letters that will bite you, letters that will mark you. I’ll write you by bullet ant and spider wasp; I’ll write you by shark’s tooth and scallop shell; I’ll write you by virus and the salt of a ninth wave flooding your lungs;

want to meet you in every place I ever loved.

I love you. I love you. I love you. I’ll write it in waves. In skies. In my heart. You’ll never see, but you will know. I’ll be all the poets, I’ll kill them all and take each one’s place in turn, and every time love’s written in all the strands it will be to you.