II. MIDDLEMYTHS - Ella's Writing Dump

THE STORY OF US



I.

We met when the trees began to wither.

I was never one to look at the big picture, and I saw the downfall of summer by little bits and pieces: the graveyard of leaves that were once evergreen, now groaning under the weight of our footsteps; how we are like houses and our mouths chimneys, if we exhale and a billow of smoke comes out and dissipates to join the others, already a growing patch of dullness hanging above our heads and blocking the stars; and if you look up, the skeletal branches of trees almost look like desperate hands trying to claw the sky, searching the mounds of grey for any trace of sunshine.

That was how you found me, fingers wide apart and hands outstretched towards the sky, oblivious to the world.

You told me later that you found yourself falling.

II.

The grass were slowly beginning to disappear, first to shrivel then to be swept away by the current of wind and footsteps, but there is this patch that holds itself up in defiance, and during breaks in between classes I’d only be too happy to break away from the four walls and make it my bed. There were no stars to see or stories for the clouds to tell, but I lay there every single day, until time melted itself and days turned to weeks, and our former indifference into acquaintance. You asked me once, head propped up by a shoulder to look at me while I continued to look at the sky, whether I believed in love.

“Of course I do.”

III.

I craved for heat and the sun’s kiss on my flesh, but when he pressed himself against me it was only a moment, a single heartbeat, like all of my other affairs. My mother once prophesied that my left hand’s ring finger would rot to bone unbound. You held my hand against your own and told me our fingers fill the space of one another’s, but I told you so does the grass when I run my hand through it.

IV.

It is the lamp’s soft glow that makes his edges softer, his smile kinder, and for the room to be darker so I wouldn’t have to see the hole I was digging myself in. The fall is beautiful. He tells me of stories I tell our daughter, tells me of lands hidden away so curious minds wouldn’t spark – and we all know how dangerous fire can be. Ghosts whisper that our love was too much that it burnt you up alive, and I can’t help but dig my fingers into my palm when I remember the pounding rain and your dead body on the pavement, because I know the truth. Your love was too much that it swallowed you alive.

For all our light and our fire, we left her nothing but burns.

V.

“Do you love me, Ceska?”

I remember a whirlwind of kisses and the bells ringing and stepping inside a vacant home and a baby girl with my eyes and your smile. I remember loving you, yes, but not anymore.

VI.

He said he wouldn’t touch a single hair on your head. He didn’t. He gave you bruises left for the mortician to cover with powder, a split lip and a broken jaw.

He said he would take me to see the world.

He didn’t.

VII.

It seems like you have told her all the stories there is the world, from the fairytale classics to the ones you made in a second when she wanted more. You told her the story of Icarus and how he came to reach his death, and the moth who flew too close to the candle. Now she's too scared of fire that she would rather walk in the dark.

VIII.

You told me you love me, and that the wedding vows were only to confirm that you’d give everything until you die, but you have lived your life every single day living then dying again whenever you’d see me looking out to the world with more love than I look at you.

He told me he loves me, but there’s in my reflection in his eyes, and it’s as if I’m made of gold, that I am a trophy, and that I must be his to keep.

You are my better fate, but I no longer have you.

IX.

It was spring when I left her, and she sees it her eyes but there is winter in her chest. She claws it with clipped fingernails – Gran was the real parent while we fed her with the storybook idea of happiness and danced around in a frenzied song of love that was and the angry red marks from when we held each other too tight.

(Or rather, the imprints of your fingers digging in as you gripped my hand, and the burns on my palms from when I tried to touch the sun.)

X.

I’m in another house yet again, kissing the foreheads of three children that aren’t mine. There’s a lump in my throat every time she passes by my window, unknowing, and her eyes are lost and gone. I rise slightly from my chair, something unknown stirring inside of me, like an instinct to follow her, wherever she’s headed. He no longer loves me, I don’t think he ever did. If it’s the same phantom of a house that we left her, maybe I’ll come home.