saxon lynx | district one | fin

Blood, it's always been so ugly.

A droplet of venom against a canvas of the softest skin spun closer to a sibling of silk than a cousin of leather. It's harsh crimson hotly contorts any surface it stains with streaks of stolen attention. For once blood has bloomed forth from the eve of the rose into the petals of it's thorns, there is nothing other than it to be seen. Blood knows no name. Blood knows no life. Blood knows no love. Blood is nothing more than a stain which cannot ever be ignored. Blood is, without question, the seed of sorrow cast out of the shadows of the skin. It is the mortal reminder of the ways in which humanity fails in fault to its harshness. Where there is blood, there is only blood. All else wilts to the eternal rose of pain. 

Maybe that's why I hate it here with him.

His face is gentle, caressed in the comforting cadence of the moonlight's embrace. Even as the thin layers of sweat trickle through the lower tendrils of his auburn hair, the sapphire spheres which rest below seem to shine with a sheen of entrancing cerulean elegance. Even as the small scarlet streaks splash across the edges of his chiseled cheeks, his lips still gleam with a light lushness that call to my own. "Mica, please-" Even as his falling fist once again collides with the running rivers of starlit water streaming from my eyes and my voice wafts in whispers to ears overturned by fear, my trembling palm rises to press against the edges of the face, even in pain, I wish to kiss. My amber eyes follow the light layer of lavender painted over the tops of my nails.

Maybe that's why he strikes my face.

He's not the first. He won't be the last to look at me like this. Yet even here, there is something heartbreakingly beautiful about the ways boys' fragility breaks in a world garnered for their toughness. From the moment our lips first locked, the moment those two cerulean seas first truly saw me, the seed of this harrowing was planted. I, as I've always been, was the gardener to Hades' affections. Constant tender care to grow a beautiful flower, a rose as red as the heart of its handler, immortally destined to eventually drive its thorns into the heart that once held its roots. This is the love designed for two boys, or at least, so he's been taught. Isn't it better to love, even for a short time that ends in your destruction, than to not ever know what it's like to be loved at all?

Don't look while I shatter though, it's not pretty. 

Once he's gone, as they always go, there is only my own hands to hold the knees cradled against my chest. There is only my ears to hear the souring sobs of a lone romantic fresh in the grief of his own fate. There is only me alone to put together the broken pieces of myself. Only me and the blood like long lost friends once again reunited in the necropolis of my cyclical fall. It's feeling is one of familiarity beneath my nails as I clean it free from my face. As eventually all that's left where there was crimson metal is clear salt. 

I've only ever wanted to be happy.

She gets the boy and he gets the girl. Hell, even he gets the boy and she gets the girl often enough and yet here I am still sitting somewhere alone in the cold staring at the broken shell of my painted nails. Yet I still walk home to a house where four eyes look at my bloodied shirt, swollen eyes, broken nails, and the only words that come are: "Go clean yourself up before dinner." I never go back down. I change my dangling earing and put on a fresh coat of paint. I go to bed early because in my dreams I'm not the outlier. I'm not an endless port for sailing ships of broken hearts. But in the end, even before the shackles of sleep steal away the thoughts of consciousness I remember one last time the trudges of truth. 

I'll always be alone like this, won't I?

In the morning, only the bruises remain. They are the maps of my past cresting in shifting shades of purple and blue. At least the blood is gone, safe beneath the softness of my skin. I grab my archery bag for training with the only look of approval my parents still remember how to share. I walk back out into the day without an ounce of myself covered, without being hidden. I walk the same as the other careers, as the other seventeen year olds, as the others who haven't put themselves back together alone from the day they said the words: "I'm gay" aloud. Because maybe today is different. Maybe today... My shoulder hits another shoulder and my smaller frame falls to the ground. Two gentle spheres of green look out from above framed firmly above soft light lips and below low blonde strands. 

I hold out my hand and plant a new seed.