HEARTBREAK HOTEL
♥ listen to the Heartbreak Hotel playlist here ♥
PAST
I was never one to let others look past the smoke and mirrors that scattered phantasmagoric illusions concealing my hollow chest cavity. Though I truly do not have the slightest clue how I was now contemplating letting the fractured mirrorball shards poking between my ribs reflect the secrets to my tricks – and not the customary optical flower – at the person beside me.
I was the homeowner of Heartbreak Hotel, as if this place did not feel quite like home – perhaps more of a nightclub with a cemetery feel.
The place ached a yearning to forget. To obliviate from omnipresent memory whatever rosy mirages had dissipated into the stinging vapor from broken-hearted lovers and their cigarettes. To sever the obsessive-compulsive romantic supercuts they’ve collected and replayed in theatres of tragedy in their towns. To waste away maudlin fixations, akin to Château Lafite Rothschild bottles empty of vintage wine, amorous stains spilled scarlet against dress shirts they couldn’t wear anymore.
We were faithless infidels who worshipped false gods between rocking hips on altars of twisted bedsheets. We were graceless adolescents intoxicated in pools of poison and visions of ecstasy. We were senseless vagabonds with sealed lips about who we used to be or how we got here; hotel rooms held hallmarks of mausoleum tombs where not a single soul dared to exhume their loveless corpses.
We – I was too. Then he came.
I have always associated real-life identities with fictional characters. He epitomized some semblance of my own Tamaki Amajiki, a projection of the third year in My Hero Academia whose quirk was manifesting whatever he consumed – octopus tentacles, clamshells, crystals – into functional body parts, Suneater his hero alias. The pair of sleep-ridden eyes mapping out constellations in indigo orbit underneath their hood, his clusters Libra rather than archetypal Pisces. The hermitical temperament exuding from his pores, silhouette of an awkward embrace that didn’t quite fit the spaces between the fingers interlacing solitude he favored. A little dazed and confused, morphing under influence of lunar phases and monsoon tides: a moonchild. Not the blurryface you’d find in a shithole like this.
I’d invited him for a casual drink – which he didn’t turn down – and here we were. What happened, he catechized. It didn’t use to be like this, did it?
Was Amajiki a psychic? Did his innate clairvoyance penetrate the sleight of hand I’d meticulously veneered; did it collapse the facade I’d seamlessly adorned? Hadn’t he been aware that in a pandemonium of sworn secrecy, speaking of our skeletons was punishable by death? Surely he‘d picked up on it upon setting foot in this wretched sanctuary. Still, he brought it up.
We sat in silence, the air pulsating with dead weight the kind to wrench apart your heart flesh only to slam them back together, numb heartstrings tugging at patchwork tissues now growing angina on the left side of my chest. This was inevitably another harmless confession trying to get me drunk on the ambrosial promises of repentance. And I went with it; I clung to any high hopes of salvific love for I was a heathen fallen from grace. I was about to pour liquid courage into my glass when Amajiki stopped me,
Don’t.
So I tried. I poured my heart out to a stranger, but I didn’t pour the whiskey.
I told him the cautionary tale haunting hushed whispers, parabolic omens passed down to daughters. Say your prayers, or you’ll lose Adam to a seductress. Recite your verses, or you’ll inherit the borderline kiss of motherly Judas. Honor your father and mother, or you’ll be abandoned in weeping and gnashing of teeth. They admonished maidens to keep their temples clean; they warned them not to end up a foolish woman like me, as if the transgressions defiling the synagogues were wholly self-inflicted undoings a byproduct of immoral assumptions.
They hardened their hearts and refused to see: I was no lamb of God incapable of trespasses against divine law, but it shouldn’t erase the remnants of original sin that stripped away my child-like innocence all too soon.
Silence again.
But you’re more than the image of those who bore you on generational curses.
PRESENT
I drew three tarot cards out of the deck I was shuffling, spreading them face up on their golden illustrations, testifying formidable synchronicities against any wishful thinking I held. The Magician, The Devil, and Death – all major Arcanas. Amajiki, don’t you see who you’re trying to save? Then I read to him the sortilege sealing my fate.
The Magician who was gifted Midas’ touch in manifesting the heart’s desires, he was reversed. He conjured cynical apparitions towards intimacy, a master of prestidigitation meant to misdirect the heart to anything but the freefalling detriment invisibly cloaked in sentiments of blind affection. Pushing others away was the illusive haven in times he needed to feel safe. I was the magician; I escaped those who tried to suffocate me with gentle love.
(tw: this paragraph contains mentions of addiction & self-harm)
The Devil whose temptations dripped saccharine venom, he was upright. He served the earthly pleasures desensitizing him of sacred emotions. He was put to slumber by dozing melodies cradling a Zoloft lullaby, pills transcribing a lilith’s sweet nothings. He befriended sharp edges and razor blades, the vessel casting feverish runes on soft skin flushed with rusting iron. I was the Devil; I self-destruct to bereave myself from coveted endearment.
Death in armor who was the messenger to metamorphosis mounted on a white stallion, he was reversed. A harbinger signaling inevitable catharsis of stagnant connections pining for unreciprocated tenderness. A sign of the times to sit with impostor syndrome, inferiority complexes, and incisive wounds covered up by makeshift band-aids. I was Death; I struggled to let go of relationships lacking mutual devotion and break cycles of suppressing volatile issues.
My explanation left Amajiki unfazed. It didn’t change his one-track mind, moreover fueling him to temper with the balances of fate by re-shuffling the tarot deck and drawing three cards of his own. What came about was his – no, our – ultimatum; a triad of major Arcanas depicting the Tower, the Wheel of Fortune, and the Lovers.
The tower whose spire was struck down into desperate flames by bolts of lightning, it was upright. A hellish christening marking fundamental shifts that shake the senses, painfully searing its commencement in burning red. A collapse of traditions no longer serving the higher self, an undertaking in time’s procession. You’re the tower, he said. Healing is in the works. It is a constant, but not without the expense of blood, sweat, and tears between non-linear highs and lows.
The Wheel of Fortune which was surrounded by winged creatures and steered luck through centripetal motions, it was upright. The greater force uniting two souls through chance encounters no one could’ve imagined, a celestial conspiracy the planets got right down to the factors of its very equation. The governor of changing seasons, stories above concrete, and x amount of heartbeats culminating in a godsend plot twist. We were guided by the Wheel of Fortune, he said. Just as other pilgrims were maybe meant to shake your dust off their feet, we were just as destined to meet by no mere coincidence.
The lovers who dwelled in the Garden of Eden under the guarding wings of archangel Raphael, they were upright. Complimentary energies bound together under empowering trust, a vulnerability whose constitution wasn’t liable but instead liberal. A commitment that will continue to show love even if one’s too far gone, even if their hearts turn black and grey as it goes. It’s the Lovers, he said. You’re no longer alone in this because now I’m here.
So with our present circumstance, do you believe we’re fighting fate?
FUTURE
It’s been months since Amajiki and I first crossed paths. He’s decided to move in and help clean up the place. The hotel is far from its former glory, but it’s getting there. I, too, am still unlearning chronic self-sabotage and seeking to be at peace with my past, to nurture and forgive the little girl sheltered inside, and stop prematurely shooting bullet holes through everything I love. Stars are being drawn around my scars – actually silver suns but the sun is also a star, is it not? – despite some reopening during relapses in recovery.
I won’t lie: thinking about how far we’ve come felt like a fever dream, and how I might be able to lose everything when I closed my eyes still brought me unease. Then again, emotional stability is an oddity when one has been subject to turbulent relationships for so long. But a golden age has begun; it’s different now. I knew though no man’s an island, he was the horizon to my shipwrecks and sirens. I knew if the oceans roar and strike, and heaven lost its light, he was always on my side (and so was I on his). If there’s nothing left but the abyssal seafaring depths of unknown oceans, I’d still hold my breath and hold on. For dear love.
