We're All Stardust [For Sampson]
Dec 18, 2013 0:30:30 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2013 0:30:30 GMT -5
[/color]Sampson Izar
{Left on the edge of the bed, a crinkled, handwritten note}
I don’t think anyone will ever understand why I love him.
I say love and not loved, ‘cause it ain’t something that will ever go away. You can patch a wound, but you can’t ever get rid of that scar. You will tell me to smile, so will Ma and Pa, but I won’t be doing that. Not for a while.
When Benat died, I’d decided to turn inward. Tried to lock away what was love because I thought it was precious to me. Better to keep everyone out than let people in, so that way I couldn’t get hurt. Except I kept getting hurt over and over again. I couldn’t fight the way my heart hurt, and it made me want to hurt everyone else. I thought that I’d had a grip on it after a while. We’d spent time down by the river. I’d prayed to the stars and found that they could let me be me—since I felt that he was always looking down at me.
Except now it’s not that Iago is going to be watching over me. He gave himself up so that I wasn’t the one who wound up bloodied and broken. The whole games had been fixed so that he wasn’t ever coming home. How’d that boy cut off his arm, and escape those bears? How’d that girl go untouched for so long? Seemed like the camera blinked when Lucy had taken a swing, almost like she’d gone and died and come back to life.
It’s us against all the odds.
So don’t tell no one about slipping out at night. The whole world will be waiting for his body to come home, and for all us to mourn him. I went through that once with Benat: the coffin, the trumpets, the standing on stage while someone talked about how bravely he’d tried to fight off the truth. I gave them my tears because I thought that they deserved it. I’d bought it, lock, stock, and barrel, too. We had to show how proud we was of his fight, and equally of how wonderful Cricket had been. But there weren’t no wonder in a girl like that. She thought she was a lion, but weren’t nothing but no house cat. All that make-up and gold can’t hide the truth: behind the smoke and mirrors she ain’t so special.
I won’t be up on stage for them to trot me out as a sob story. It was born in me the night that Iago died, that there ain’t no reason to worship the capitol. No reason to think they got a hold on a life that don’t care about living. Maybe I’m selfish and maybe I’m talking from a space where there ain’t much left to give, but I don’t recognize why I got to be afraid. Let them tear out my tongue or worse. I’m tired of feeling my heart broken and never mended. Either they end it or I do. So I got to go away, with all that I can carry. Rum Tum made it out there and he’s half an Izar. Iago was half an Izar too, and I never seen nobody from District Eleven as fierce as he was.
I can’t ask you to come with me because I know that we ain’t meant for the same place. You got other people that love you, and other people that’ll break your heart. I can’t bear losing you any more than I could bear losing Benat. I went and let someone die for me; I don’t want nobody else to do that for me, neither. He’s up in the stars now, and the universe must know what has become of him.
Don’t think that none of this was your fault. I love you and always will. After Benat died, you were everything I needed. Strong, smart—you got everything you need without me. You’ve done all the protecting you can, but it’s clear that capitol ain’t going to let that be. And I see it tear you to pieces, no matter how strong you want to be. Don’t forget that I see things too, Deval. I see how they got you worked up and torn down. You're knocked around like the clothes on a laundry line: you hang on only because you got to, but nobody can control the wind. Take heart that the sun still rises, and the wind still blows. The corn’ll come in next season, and the rains will fall. The wind will come whipping through the fields and bite a bitter cold.
Think of me with every passing hour as I’ll think of you. A boy that taught me everything that I know. A friend that got me to learn what it meant to be a man. That love means letting go, even when we don’t have nowhere to be.
Please don’t forgive me for this. Please be angry. Please curse my name to the stars and scream at how foolish I am. Because this whole world is only going to drive you crazy if you let it. So I say you can go on living, living, living where the rules are yours to take. You can go on and find the truth in the little lies that pile up and keep us quiet. You can hold tight to the same truth that kept pa quiet all these years. It’ll be a quiet little life, and I hope you live on long past the end of my days.
But me? I got to set out for the open road. I got to get beyond the wall, if even just a few steps before they shoot me dead. Because as sure as the stars in the sky, I don’t believe I’m meant to be here.
I loved you Deval. I love you still.
Yours Eternally,
Sampson[/blockquote][/size][/justify][/color]
