"One man's trash 

Is another man's treasure.

One man's pain

Is another man's pleasure."

I can't reach him anymore. I don't know what to do. 

Because Mir screamed, and I ran, I ran to him. And he was on the ground, and the morning light of the second morning of us being here, and the light of the fifth day of Mir being back with us but not really, not really here is terrible, terrible. Because it shows me something horrible- Mir, and what terrible waste surrounds him.

The desk, before clean and shiny and clear, is scratched so that not a finger's width of space is unmarked with the splinted, torn up wood. One leg is knocked down, broken, so the desk is unbalanced, on the verge. On the verge of falling. The picture frames, with paintings and pictures of waves and beaches, are ripped down, shredded, and the empty frames hang limply, a sign of what used to be.

The nice, clean floorboards are bare, the carpet that had covered them ripped up and splayed across one corner. And there the floorboards are splintered, and the light shows just the faint tinge of red caught on the tiny spikes. Everything, the shells and the pillows and the bowl of mints, are flung around the room, ripped, turned to strips of fabric and sticks of wood and fragments of a dead lfie savier. All the lights in the room, clear and clean and new, are broken, smashed, dead. All but one, the one that used to be in a glass case on the ceiling. That one, with the shattered edges of glass around it, is pulled down so the light flickers on the end of wires; red and black, but the sunlight is enough. The sunlight is enough to see. 

The sunlight is enough to see the loss that surrounds Mir, and the sunlight is enough to see Mir. Crouched, wild-eyed, in the middle of the wasted room. His fingernails torn and bleeding red. His knuckles raw and red, the skin rubbed off. The too fast, too strong movement of his skinny chest, up, down. The curl of his lips as he looks at me, as he bares his white teeth that are stained, yellow, red. His eyes, how they are completely black. No brown, no white around the edges. Black, a bottomless hole, and he is falling, falling. 

Has he hit the bottom?

Has he lost whatever he used to have? 

And then he blinks, rapidly, and shifts his weight so I can see that his eyes are hazel and white again, and it was just the light. Just the light, I repeat to myself, because it must be and I'm so scared, so scared of this animal before me and what he is capable of, what he can do with his mind that is just mirrors. All mirrors, and no exit. No trick of the door, no slipping in a crack. Mirrors. I didn't want to be trapped, but I might be. He is under my care, and my care is just an illusion, just nothing. Nothing.

Where is Mir? Where had my dongsaeng gone? 

I can feel my breaths, and I know what I look like but I can't help it, because I didn't sign up for this and I didn't want this but now I have it.  Now I do have this weight on my shoulders, and it is named Mir and it is crouched, agile, in front of me, backgrounded by a distruction it did itself with its rubbed-raw fingers and torn fingernails.

And while we stand here, locked, alone, Mir blinks again, and he straightens. His eyes shoot to me, and they fasten on me, wide and his breaths come faster and faster and his eyes, they calm, suddenly.

But his chest is still rising, falling, fast. He blinks, once, twice. He looks around, and when he sees, when he truly sees what I see, his rapid breath fade. He's calm, calmed by this distruction, by this sick waste around him. What was he trying to do, with this? What did he want? 

Mir stands up, straightening his thin legs to their full length, and turns, slowly, in a circle, soaking in what he did, his work. And when he faces me again, he stops, and he had this sort of look on his face; not peaceful, exactly. Not happy, not contented. But like this is how it's meant to be, like this is how it is, and nothing can change it. And he speaks to me, his words, for once, clear and understandable, like how I could hear his mind. If I could hear his mind like this he could be cured. We could fix this broken boy in front of me. But his mind is accented and clotted and it doesn't make sense, not at all. 

"Everyone's trash," he says. "Everyone's trash is my treasure."

"And my treasure is my life." 

And then he, with his head not hung low, not hung high, leaves. He leaves me with his room that is trash, now. Everything in here is trash. He leaves me with his strange words ringing in my ears. He leaves me with the feeling that he just gave me something important, something I could flip and twist and use to get him back. But I don't know what he said. I don't get what he means, what he wants. I don't know what to do, and, for now, he leaves me with nothing. 

Nothing yet.

Not yet.

~~~

Ace, King, Queen. Jack, 10. All the way down to two. And then it starts again. It's an endless cycle, from 13 to one, in a deck of cards. It was comforting, to me, for four months. It still is. I thought, all the way, that when we found Mir, I could put these cards down. I thought that I would like to light a bone fire somewhere, toss them into the flames. I thought it would signal Mir being back with us, that everything was okay again. 

I can't burn them now. Mir is gone now. But maybe he's back. Maybe he came back, just a little. Becuase that ace of spades was the right one. That card let me win the game, at least that game. Mir won. Mir won, for me. 

Does that mean something? 

I hope it does.

And if it doesn't, I'll hope anyway, becuase I hoped for four months and I have hoped, in a different way, these five days, two at the house on the beach, here. Three I can't remember. Just Mir and doctors and panic. I remember the sound of blood rushing past my ears, and I remember white bandages, and I remember a doctor with sad eyes, shaking his head in that way that you dread. No. No, he didn't make it. Because he didn't.

Mir didn't.

This other one, with the old eyes and the lost mind and the shadowed heart and the shriveling soul, has survived. He was born. The other one I thought was dead, but maybe he's not. Maybe he's fighting, maybe he's fighting back. Maybe. 

Maybe. 

And that's all I dare to think right now, that's how much hope I give myself right now. And then I sigh, so loud in the silent morning, and I deal myself another round, another endless round.

~~~

I wanted to feel safe. No. No, I didn't. I wanted to feel normal. I wanted to feel like I belonged. But I didn't. Because even though my dream was normal, when I woke and for that split second it was normal, and then it wasn't. It wasn't normal. It wasn't my life. 

So I made it my life. I made it my room, where I belong, just another empty wrapper on the floor. Just another piece of trash. Because this trash, this trash is my life.

I would wish it wasn't. 

But I don't know. I don't know anymore. 

I don't know what I want. I just know what I need. And I need life. I know I need life.

And so I made my life.