bring your love, baby, i can bring my shame
bring the drugs, baby, i can bring my pain
i've got my heart right here
i've got my skulls right here
the weeknd

She is a girl of impossible nature. She wants impossible things and dreams of impossible gardens growing in impossible skies. She doesn't like the impending doom called the 'future'.

People say she's a lost soul, looking for a direction or a sign, but she's not lost.

She's just a teenage spirit ahead of life.







He meets her when she pickpockets an old man on the subway.

There's an ungodly scent of perfume on the train cart. Odd, since the air is usually masked in a fog of musky cologne. The feminine aroma, Jongin cannot deny, belongs to the devil dancing around the many suits and briefcases, snipping at pockets and stealing watches.

The old man, an unfortunate victim, unluckily takes a position near the doors where she so conveniently awaits. She takes his wedding band when she offers him a seat. She takes his wallet when he thanks her. She takes his handkerchief when he waves goodbye.

She has too much shining gold glitter on her fingernails, and you'd think someone would catch those flashy claws when they whisk belongings away from bodies, but she has a face that any man would apologize ten times to. It's a face you can't expect a crook would have. Eyes like diamonds, skin like pearls.

She leaps off with the crowd and all of her mesmerizing shimmer disappears into the mazes of faces and shadows. All that is left is a trace of the smothering, lingering scent of sandalwood, peonies and blackberries. It suffocates his thoughts and clouds his mind's clarity.

Suddenly, Jongin feels a flower blooming around his unsteady heart and his rib cages become a corset two sizes too small. It's uncomfortable to breathe.

He notices a stop later that his phone is missing from his back pocket.







He meets her again when he stops at a gas station.

There's a familiar gleam in the shadows when he looks in the corner of his eyes. There, in fact, she regally stands, behind the counter, selling cigarette papers to a few men his own age. A large fall from grace and gone was the throne she so proudly sat on. The smug smirk that he had witnessed robbing from the unfortunate now stands silent in distaste and discomfort. Her chest's wounded pride is covered with a name plate named Krystal. A crown of damask pink roses and crisp lavenders float in the long waves of black hair and tacky gold star stickers cling to her eyelashes. If it was anyone else, it would be called unorthodox and uncouth.

He places two beers on the counter, an invitation for a drink on the concrete steps aligned below the door. She shoves them into a bag without a bat of the stars or a wink of the black satin winged eyelids.

He begins to put away his change of an extra twenty dollars when they seem to slip out of his hands.

"That's my mothering tip," she pockets it. "It's a fair trade."

He leaves with his wallet light and his chest heavy. He finds his cellphone in his pocket (and a note with seven digits and a light lipstick stain).







He's a man of love letters in silk bounds and romantic fumes, late night kissing and fate being read on knuckles. Ten thousand words about the way she smiles and how he collects galaxies and galaxies of warmth every time she tucks her hair behind the curves of ears.

She's a girl of immature aspirations and inspirations and curse words with a head straight and chin high. Everything belongs to her, but she belongs to no one. Periodic twirls of starlight and envelopes of electric blue velvet. Magic. Love is not on the agenda, because love promises no magic. Independence and a strike of free spirit.







Jongin can't think of a plot that goes along with a love story like this.
Krystal couldn't either. It was too realistic for her tastes (except, to her, it was not a love story).







Their companionship: entirely undefined and sometimes verging beyond ual. He expects drugs and alcohol to litter her tongue and breath, but she turns out in actuality to be as pure as the crystal she is. She does not allow white powders to smolder her natural sheen.







She has quick fingers and a unkempt desire for more. She also has a flair for drama and a sickly sweet smile to follow along and keep her unhealthy addiction afloat. If there's one thing she loves about Jongin's company, it's that he didn't try to dissuade her from continuing.

When Jongin asks her what she wants in life over the many beers they drink behind the counter during her shifts, she answers —"adventure"— with a simplistic shrug and a mere frown. He frowns too and she pats his head — emphasis on the friendly and lacked just enough romantic connotation — to keep his tiny, school girl crush from trickling out of proportion. When he asks her why she steals, she speaks —"adventure requires money"— and goes on about the aesthetics of Budapest and Bordeaux and Poland. She asks why he likes to hang around with her so much, and he sings a sad song of a love long lost (Krystal doesn't know it's her).

He becomes a limp shade of a man every time she speaks of cobblestone paths and places that no one's ever been ("Who cares about Paris when there's St. Petersburg?"). With every dreamy sigh, he shrivels thin and bruises.







Late night, one night, stars bright, he kisses her in a drunken stupor of alcoholic melody, and she tastes like a supernova of champagne. He feels his hollow skin being filled and his rustic bones rejuvenating. All Krystal feels is the thorns on her neck rising.

He's lost in the swirls of self destruction and Krystal feels a twinge of regret. She traces every path that she has taken and every map in the world, and she wonders why it is only now that she realized his school girl crush was always love.

She leaves him behind when she's surmounted enough money from the god awful nightly shifts of gas toxin and red sticky fingers, a plane ticket and shame in both hands. But no matter how far she travels — ten thousand miles to the East, two thousand six hundred and seventy two miles to the West — Jongin's smothering, lingering scent of hormones and sickening syrup of affection traces along the lining of her skin. A crown of her domination, even if it is the one she never wanted conquered.







In the valley of her limbs, in the hurricane of her smoke, in the palms of Jongin's shaky hands, he writes, swears and breathes, that there is always one thing he loves more than the stars and that is Krystal.







See you in Luxembourg,
xo Krystal













you are flowers in my stomach.

cutting me open nightly, blooming through the cracks of the ribs.

i only want to be the sun for you.
elke river