16. Alex Sebring
Chapter 16
Alex Sebring
Copper and gold streak the sky, warmth blooming at the edges of the world. The sun here doesn’t simply rise; it breathes, stretching its light across the sea and the hills.
I haven’t slept. The bed in my grandparents’ fale is firm and familiar, but the ache inside me isn’t something this place soothes.
I’m here, like Tinā suggested. Breathing fresh air. Letting the ocean salt soak into my skin. Letting silence speak louder than the noise I left behind in Sydney.
It’s been days since I arrived. I’ve spent time with my grandfather, sat with my grandmother. I’ve eaten warm taro and drunk from fresh coconuts and watched the way the waves kiss the shore.
And today, I’m doing the thing I came here to do.
The tattoo fale is tucked behind the village, shaded by palms and thick with history. Ink and coconut oil linger in the air, their scents woven into the thatched roof and mats. The man inside is old now, older than I remember, but his eyes are still sharp—still seeing more than they say.
“Aleki,” he greets me, using my Samoan name, voice gravel-thick. “You’ve come to bleed again.”
I nod, my chest tight, words barely clearing my throat. “This pain hasn’t passed. It’s too deep. I think it belongs on my skin.”
He studies me for a moment, then gives a slow, solemn nod. “When the heart carries too much, the body must help. Ink is not just art, Aleki—it’s memory. It’s truth. It’s how we survive what tried to break us.”
He gestures for me to sit and motions toward the tools. Not a machine. Not a sterile gun in a sterile shop. These are the au tapulu—the handmade combs. Bone and wood and ink.
Tradition. Pain. Honor.
“Where will we place this one?”
I tap my chest, just over my heart. “Here. This is where she lives.”
He doesn’t ask who. Maybe he already knows. Maybe heartbreak looks the same in every man who’s sat on this mat.
His fingers trail over the spot, mapping it with a quiet understanding.
“What will you carry here?”
He isn’t only asking about the design. It’s about the wound it covers.
“The manumea. The ghost bird that mates for life.”
His eyes flick up, something ancient and knowing shining in their depths. “Endangered but not extinct.”
He nods slow and solemn. “The manumea sings for only one mate. And if that mate is lost to him, he sings anyway.”
This man has known me all my life. He’s carved my story into my skin. And today, he’s about to hear a new chapter. “She has become lost to me.”
I lie back, the woven mat biting into my skin as he mixes the ink, calls for his apprentice, and begins the blessing. I let my eyes drift shut, and the first strike lands like thunder. Sharp. Deliberate.
He works with slow, meticulous hands.The tapping sound echoes in my bones. Each line and curve that will become the manumea is placed with care.
As the ink sinks deeper, my thoughts drift.
To Magnolia’s laughter—how it started soft and built like a swell, always louder than she expected.
To the way she looked at me when we made love. Or when we fucked hard.
To when she said ‘I love you.’
I think about her journal entries. Her handwriting. The parts of her she never meant for anyone else to see but gave to me. And how I read those words with shaking hands and couldn’t reconcile them with the cold text that came weeks later.
I feel every inch of this pain. And somehow, it feels earned.
“This bird never stops searching for its mate,” the tattooist says, not looking up from his work.
I close my eyes again, swallowing the lump in my throat.
This ink isn’t for anyone else. It’s not for show, not for meaning wrapped in metaphor. It’s all mine.
My scar. My vow. My proof that she existed.
That I loved her.
That I still do.
He works in silence for a long time, the only sound being that of the rhythmic tap of bone against skin. My breath pushes through clenched teeth, each strike etching her deeper into me.
When it’s done, he leans back, eyes scanning the ink like it’s a story now told in full. His apprentice hands him a small bowl of oil—thick and fragrant, the kind his father used, and his father before him.
He rubs it into my skin, a balm over the fresh wound. Then he places a folded strip of tapa cloth across my chest, the oil darkening the edges as it sinks in.
“To protect what’s sacred,” he says.
I nod, my throat thick. Because she was. She still is.
He rises and gives me a nod that says we’re finished but not done. The pain hasn’t left—but now it has a place. Something I can see and touch. Something that won’t fade.
I sit up, ribs sore, breath thin. But there’s something different in my chest now. Not lighter, not healed. But anchored.
I gather my shirt but don’t put it on. The cloth presses over the tattoo, soothing and stinging all at once. I step out of the fale into the late afternoon sun, where the air smells like salt and soil and stories passed down.
And for the first time in weeks, I inhale a full breath.
The sky is streaked in hues of twilight when I return to my grandparents’ house. The village has stilled, the hush of evening settling over the trees and rooftops like a blessing. Even the breeze moves slower now, as if it knows the world needs peace and quiet.
My chest aches with every step, the sting of fresh ink pulsing in time with my heartbeat beneath the cloth. But it’s a good ache.
Their simple house is tucked into the hillside with wide open shutters and the smell of something sweet still lingering in the air. Tinā always says this is where we come when we lose ourselves. And I think she’s right.
I toe off my sandals at the back door and step inside. Tui is seated on the front porch watching the ocean. Nana hums as she moves through the kitchen. She doesn’t ask where I’ve been for so long. She knows.
I ease into the rocking chair beside him, its wooden frame creaking beneath me. We don’t speak at first. Just sit together, letting the rhythmic hush of waves meeting the shore fill the quiet between us.
After a while, Nana joins us, a woven blanket draped around her shoulders despite the heat. She eases into the chair beside me, eyes on the horizon. “What did you mark yourself with this time?”
I swallow hard, eyes still on the sea. “The manumea.”
She’s quiet for a beat, then nods, understanding. “The bird that mates for life.”
“I thought I had as well.” My voice cracks a little, and I hate it.
Tui doesn’t speak often, but when he does, his words are wise. “The manumea is still out there. Searching. Singing. Even alone, it doesn’t stop. Not because it’s desperate—but because it remembers the sound of being found.”
She reaches over and brushes a strand of hair from my forehead, like I’m still five years old. “Pain tells you what mattered. And if it mattered this much, it’s not finished yet.”
That undoes me a little. I allow their words to settle into all the places still raw and open.
“I don’t know how to move forward without her.”
“You don’t have to know right now,” Nana says. “You just have to move. The rest will come.”
We sit together for a while longer in a silence that feels full rather than empty. A breeze rolls off the sea and kisses the wound beneath the cloth. It stings, but I welcome it.
Because pain that has meaning hurts less than pain that has none.
Sydney feels colder when I return. Not the weather, but the air inside this house. The silence I used to drown in doesn’t sting as much—it just hums low, like a sound I’m learning to live with.
I drop my bag inside the door. Kick off my shoes. The house looks the same. but I’m not sure I do.
It takes a while to move. To shower. To eat. But eventually, I step into the one room I’ve avoided the longest.
The gym.
It still smells like chalk and steel. Like discipline.
I stand in the doorway for a beat, heart thudding for reasons that have nothing to do with cardio. Then I cross the threshold, my feet finding familiar grooves in the mat.
The speakers come on with a slow beat—something low and pulsing. I stretch, stiff and unsteady, but I move. I lift. Slowly at first. Then heavier. Harder.
And when I catch my reflection in the mirror—sweat beading at my brow, muscles straining under weight—I see the edge of the tattoo peeking through the neck of my T-shirt.
A reminder of a love that still lives under my skin. Of a woman who cracked me open… and the man I’m trying to become because of it.
My grip tightens on the bar. And just like that, her voice finds me. Not real—just words written in her journal about us. About me.
I thought I’d be ready to go home after this trip. But all of a sudden, nothing about leaving feels right. I’m not ready to go. I’m not ready to leave him. I don’t think I ever will be.
I lift again. And again. Until the ache in my body drowns out the one in my chest.
It’s not redemption. It’s not closure. But it’s something other than dying a slow death.
She may not be mine anymore…
But I’m still here. And I’m not done with me yet.