Everything in her life had always been a straightforward case of yes - or no?

   Everything she could remember, from the way her mother demanded she finish her homework after dinner, to the practiced roll of Hana’s eyes whenever she asked to borrow her CD’s.

   There were no ‘maybe’s’, no morally ambiguous shades of grey to merge the canvas of black and white in her mind. No messy splotches of inconsistent thoughts or fickle decisions - just do, or don’t.

   Win, or lose.

   Friend, or not.

   Her life was linear, a steadfast, sturdy line on a blank canvas that stretched up, and up, and up. Sometimes down, sometimes up, but never crooked.

   One or the other.

   Until.

   She finds herself looking into eyes a little bit like home, which is strange because she has a home. Home is with mother, and father, and Hana who still won’t let her borrow her favourite CD’s. Home is a place - it is where she grew up inside four sturdy walls in a neighbourhood lined with similar structures.

   But then these eyes are glistening as they listen to her every word in rapt attention, half-lidded with the promise of sleep as the girl opposite her fights to stay awake in the early hours of the morning. Momo keeps talking, earns soft giggles and delighted hums in response and she has never wanted home to be a sound so badly.

   It’s early, too early she thinks, and she lies down to sleep on Sana’s shoulder. She is wide awake, however, looking up at the ceiling and trying to figure out how she can build a home in someone else without foundations or brick.

   She had never been one for metaphors, for the abstract comparison of two separate entities or the imposition of an emotion on an unfeeling object. Things were things, and people were people, and a smile was just a smile until she smiled at her and Momo thought of home.

   (She should have realised it then, really.)

   Sana wasn’t linear. She was a scribble, a messy array of mismatched lines that criss-crossed and intersected on the page with Momo’s own.

   It was chaotic, nothing organised or meticulous about placement or structure, or even the force of which the line had been applied with. It was thick and bold in some places, a standout black mark on the paper but in others it was thin - translucent, as though the weight of the hand guiding the pen was feather light, non-existent.

   It was Sana.

   Unapologetica