if you're still bleeding • sierra's death

The graveyard waits with open arms and vacant lots, ready to catch you when you fall.

Your bedroom window is still open just a crack, and as winter inches inside, frost settles on your sheets.

There is a bloodstain on the carpet that Mama couldn't shift, a scar etched into the fabric from the time your bones tore your skin.

In the letterbox there are unopened envelopes and spider-webs, undisturbed and untouched.

Snow has settled on the front garden and no footsteps mar it's perfect, tranquil beauty.

A coffin lies in waiting, your initials already engraved into it's wood in elegant print: SB, meaningless letters on a empty casket.

Your body lies without breath, far away from your hollow home.

It's for the best that you are not coming back; there is nobody waiting to greet you.

. . .

You saw death coming long ago. It hid in the shadows of District Twelve, planted kisses on your forehead at daybreak.

It was wrapped in the bandages that bound your fragile limbs and entwined in the braids Meela twisted into your hair.

Death jumped rope with you, daring you to trip, breathing down your neck at every footfall.

He held your hand as you climbed high into the branches of the tree, whispering you false comforts.

He never relented, and you never feared.

In fact, you refused to him chase you - you followed him, asking him to grant you your last remaining wish: freedom.

For a while, death refused.

He made you fight, sculpting your brittle bones into the frame of a warrior, moulding your childlike body with a heart of fire.

"Let me go."

"Not yet."

. . .

You have known many different darknesses in your life.

It began with pain - broken ribs and shattered arms, splintered shins and a fractured spine. You learned to count injuries the way other children counted sheep.

Next came the medicine. This darkness was a blanket, a numbness no better than the agony. They killed the pain, and they almost killed you.

Meela left, a hurricane of bitter words. Being alone was the next darkness - blank as the walls of your empty house, your prison. You waited. She did not come home.

The next darkness was poison. You lost yourself in the Games, found life. Adventure greeted you and waved goodbye in a fleeting turn of fate.

Death comes next, more pure than any other.

You embrace it, an old friend.

For the first time, you are unbroken.

"Goodbye."