“But, why can’t they be together, Mama?” I remember weeping underneath my breath when I was twelve, still young and blooming. Two iridescent betta fish, one black and the other white, drifted beneath the waters of fresh new tanks. They had been separated, a curtain made of books and paper fell between them. To my dismay, I had been told that they could never see the sight of the other, regardless of their beauty and scheme. 

“Well, they would want to fight each other, darling. You want your fish to be happy, yes?” My mother had explained, sweet and simple as if sugar and honey. I remember happily consuming her words–-after all, it was my mother—despite the bittersweet aftertaste it had left lingering upon my tongue.

I like to believe that I had cared well for the fish, even with tiny nimble palms and a composure that could not always be kept steady. I had fed them well, with both food and love, and ensured that their gazes were kept infinitely empty of the other.

Once they had passed--unknowing of the other’s existence--I had gained you in my life. It seemed as if we had been strung together by the same thread, sculpted from the same marble. After all of these years, I still vividly remember the pink notebook you had decorated with skateboard stickers, ones you had embezzled from your brother’s collection.

“I really love your stickers,” I had complimented, smiling after I had spoken just as my mother had taught me. “They’re really cool!”

“Aw, thanks! I like your pencil a lot too—do you have another? We could match!” You had giggled, joy illuminating from your eyes. I rummaged through my bag, eager to keep the light within your face from fading, and reached for one of the opposite colors.

The following week, I bought skateboard stickers for my notebook too. The concept of matching—displaying our knotted fate to the world—had clung to me like lint. Although, I had not known it to be wrong to lay them across my pages, scattered about like spring petals.

“That was my thing! You could’ve gotten other stickers,” you had whined. You abandoned the pencil I had lent to you, snapped it in half as it lay covered by the rest of its fiber dust. I remember watching as you drew in a different pencil, softly wounding me with its jagged point.

Yet like all routines, we had reset the next day. You used my pencil again, and I had gotten new stickers—dreamcatchers of different sizes and colors. I had learned that we were not strung from the same string, but two different colors opposite of the wheel. If you were to be white, I would be black, and vice versa. We were not meant to be the same, but meant to complement the other. 

That once had been my ideology, until I made yet another mistake years later.

“I think I want to be a painter,” I whispered through the breeze, letting it pick up my words and deliver them to your ears. 

For a moment, you silently sat in existence and nothing more. “But… I already told you I wanted to be a painter when we’re older. Can’t you pick a different hobby?” you whimpered softly. I watched as your lips curled up and your shoulders drooped, separating like wind and water. 

“Well, I already bought the supplies and canvas, so I—”

“I had already called dibs! Don’t you understand what that means?” You wailed as tears decorated your face, flowing like the ripples of a bay. You had run off—to where I do not know—and I did not need to be told that I was not invited to chase after you.

A week later, after freezing from the cold shoulder you had given me, I apologized.

“I want to be an accountant now. I’m sorry for trying to be a painter like you,” I pleaded. “Please forgive me.”

I saw a wrath in your eyes-- it was not one that burned, but instead one that smothered upon a single touch. From your eyes, it secreted like poison, bearing its effects on the fragility of my thoughts. It traced over me, following the lines that furrowed my eyebrows and the nerves that gently trembled my lips. 

“Alright, fine,” it had extinguished, faded to nothing more than a glimpse. “I guess I can forgive you.”

Regardless of my efforts, however, we continued to bicker and argue over things we had placed too much weight upon. We were children, soon to cascade off the cliffs of childhood into the ocean of adulthood, and when we had become too similar, we tripped underneath our own slender feet. I remember the skirt I had allegedly stolen, the text I was wrong to have sent, the grin I do not recall giving. You nicked at each flaking flaw of my actions, and did not fret to make it known to the society that surrounded us.

Eventually our string, endlessly knotted and frayed, had snapped at last.

As vivid as it had first occurred, I reminded myself of the secret I had once told you. In exchange, you had bestowed upon me a promise, one that should have locked your lips in place and forbade the words from rolling off of your tongue. 

“I won’t tell a soul!” you had preached. A blatant lie, disguised by the melody of your honeysuckle voice.

“Hey!” A girl shouted from across the room, hours later in the brutal heat of noon. “I heard a rumor about your parents earlier this morning. Is it actually true? I’m really sorry if it is-- that’s terrible.”

I did not reply. My voice must have been trapped beneath a frozen lake, for nothing came out except the hot tears that slipped mistakenly down my cheeks.

I cried in my mother’s arms late that night until I felt small enough to be cradled once more. A wound had been torn open again, one that had been mended and hurt together by your delicate hands.

As my sobs had slowed, no longer choked by the tightness of my throat, I stared at the now empty fish tanks that laid atop my bookshelf. The curtain was still drawn, only left to protect one bowl from the other. I thought of my betta fish, forbidden from knowing of the other’s existence solely for the sake of their survival.

I imagined ourselves in a single tank, drowning in its water. For as long as we remain in the same beaten cage, one of us will always prove to be bruised by the hand of the other. The Fates will intertwine us as their puppets, and force our fists across our unscathed faces. 

I did not rekindle the fire this time, one that kept us warm and burnt us like charcoal in concert. I watched as you slipped through my fingers like rain, and even if my heart yearned for the agony, I did not try to catch you. We slowly drained into the ocean, and eventually, we had learned what it was like to swim without the other.