easton collins {two} finished

"i hear the leaves
crunching under my feet

getting louder and louder like
the voices in my head."
- sophie, untitled.

I am born to a faceless mother and carried home by my father. He wraps me up in a soft green shell and plants me in our home. And although I may wail and cry, paint shadows underneath watering eyes and demand constant attention, I plant my roots to my home in District Two and begin to grow. Dad told me she was there, at the beginning - but I guess we weren't what she wanted. I don't think I'm what he wanted either, but that's alright.

For a very empty house, I have everything I need.

(There's a little girl with polished feet clapping against the wooden skeleton of her home. It's far too harsh of a sound to call homely, but it's all she has.

So the little girl becomes the home - a harsh skeleton and an empty void with a little girl helplessly wandering through the in-between.)

"Don't" she says from the mirror. It's often the first place I see her.

"Why not?" I reply, turning to face her petrified expression in person. "It's old." Fingers curl around the old jewelry box, coated with dust and well-worn memories clinging to the box's sleek wooden sides.

Her eyes widen - "But, but you can't, Easton! Don't you remember?"

And I do - I do remember. Flighty shafts of memory that dance in front of my eyes - a birthday, fields of green, candles and presents. Dad had paid for everything but only skirted around the edges, the true hosts of the party our friendly neighbours. They sung Happy Birthday, baked me a cake, kissed me on the cheek and wished me the best of luck starting school. (I felt in that moment that perhaps I had a family after all, that I could go and live with them - only for a bit, and only next door.) Dad patted my head and told me to go play with the others. (Our neighbours moved the next year to a bigger and grander home, if it were ever possible. But I didn't care about how big their house was, I didn't want that. I just wanted a family - even if I didn't know it yet.)

The ballerina in the box dances just as beautifully as it did when they watched me open it for the first time. I smile, and place it back underneath my bed.

"There," she says. "Much better."

I blink, and she's gone.

(The little girl is taller, older, wiser. She stands with Career grace and confident poise, her skeleton as sharp as her tongue. With every glance in the mirror she quickly adjusts her appearance - a tug of a hair bow, a brush down of her coat, a hurried hand to sweep away her splitting hair and hide her tired eyes.

Being alone for so very long has drained her of her mother's unknown beauty that she passed down to her exhausted daughter. And although you can't see her, her figment copy stands right beside her in the mirror, smiling away at the both of them through tiny gloss-coated lips.

But ever since the halls filled with the sound of sad sighs and shiny shoes she's always been there. Always listening. Always watching.)

Twin would laugh through the cracks in the walls the first time I found her. Hide-and-seek with myself didn't quite work, until she skittered through the floorboards and pounced into my vision. I never questioned her - not once. Not that she was my mirror-image, not that she'd warn me of people and places and things I wasn't so sure of myself, not that sometimes she'd get me dangerously close to terrible trouble.

Inside the tree-trunk world of stairs and echoes she became my only companion. Playing tag (she always won - I could never touch her, and she could never touch me, thus I was the one catching smoke and snatching at her make-believe figure) and screeching with joy until my ribs ached with fatigue (they were not my footsteps bouncing off of the walls, they were her own sounds, her own rhythm) we grew up together - sometimes hidden, but never apart. Maids and cooks and Avoxes alike would startle me and I'd freeze, terrified our secret was discovered ("you mustn't tell anyone, not a soul, or I'll be lost forever" she'd warn) - but she would hide away just in time. Twin is me, and I am twin.

I know of nothing else.

(The little girl - not so little on the outside, but underneath her skeleton tells a whole other story - surrounds herself with anyone and everyone. School became the place where she could finally shine, training became the place where she could feel recognition fall against her olive pallor and watch through brown eyes as attention crawled against her being. She craved it, her whole essence did - years of going without human touch led her to cling to friends in hugs and taught her how to bring everyone's eyes in the room to hers, have them hang off of every word. She learnt how to pull and push people like the ocean's tide - clinging to their attention and sailing away when she no longer needed them.

Though the only person she wished would anchor into her life simply glided past her, hiding away in the covers of paperwork and business and other important, adult matters. Matters that were obviously in dire need of attention, attention more important than family, attention more important than his own daughter. She didn't know, but looking at her hurt. Looking at her reminded him too much of her and was so afraid of his daughter leaving, just like her mother did, that he never risked meeting her in the first place. She thought that papers and signatures were more important than herself, finding sanction with her imaginary friend instead. A friend, a conscience, that told her to forget him, to not bother, to damn him and his paperwork to hell and move on.

Still, she never stopped trying.)

"Go away" I mutter from my half of the room. "If you're here to gloat, then leave."

"Don't be silly" she says sternly, swinging her legs up and down against the side of her bed. "You've done that already. You don't really need me here, yet here I am."

It's moments like these that I'm glad Dad didn't care enough to question why I wanted two beds in my room in the first place. He'd wave me away with his magic, half-hearted hand - and whatever I desired would appear. (Mention the desire to know about my mother, and he forgets I exist altogether. Twin likes to yell abuse at him when that happens, but I quieten her regardless of the fact that only I can hear her. Silent screams still hurt even when you're not sure why.)

She rises from her perfectly-made bed, no imprints of her presence embedded in the sheets, no creases folded into the linen. "So tell me," she inquires. "Why am I here?"

"You know that already" I mutter, looking anywhere but the mirror and her gaze.

"Not this again!" she cries in frustration, movements drawn out and lazy. "You know it, I know it, let's play guessing games and avoid-the-topic-like-the-plague until we forget why we're really angry in the first place and blame it all on little old me."

There's silence - she's right, I know it, she knows it.

"I'm sorry" I say after a long while.

She smiles - genuinely sympathetic. "It's okay. You never-"

"-have to apologise to me." I finish.

We smile in unison.

"I wish he'd talk to us" I murmur under my breath - but of course, she can hear me.

"I wish I could talk to him. Give him a piece of my mind."

"Our mind" I argue weakly - I know what's coming before the words leave my mouth. We both do, of course.

"If you had the guts, you could" she bites back. "You could become me."

"But that means-"

"-losing me, I know." (Sometimes I forget that we're not really twins but two of one thing. Myself, and who I'd like to be. Who I've always wanted to be. Who I could be, but never will.)

Unless...

"Don't you dare!" she shrieks, and if I could feel her touch upon me her knuckles would burn with rage and fingers would claw into my flesh, drunk on desperation to stay alive. It's something in me, in both of us - the need to keep going when everybody else forgets about me. But she'd never hurt me - not ever.

It's the same game - don't you dare, I won't, promise me, I promise. We dance our perfectly practiced dance, the same old back-and-forth routine. And then she's gone, and the girl in the mirror mimics my every move. I am alone, left to my thoughts and privacy.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if one day I had to break my own promise to myself. And then she's there again, in a blink of an eye, in a travelling thought of a thought, an atom at the back of my brain, to tell me my answer before I ask the question.

I'd be completely and utterly alone.

"you're the only friend i need
sharing beds like little kids

we'll laugh until our ribs get tired
but that will never
be enough

(i want them back)"
- lorde, ribs.