Wear My Heart On My Fist //Saffron

"i want to say i'm sorry
but i'm afraid i don't know how.

because i have been wicked
and my cold antarctic mouth
won't let me speak.

not then,
not now."
- m.n, untitled.

I think I might explode.

(Or wake up.)

This is a never-ending spiral of dreams. I fall asleep, I awake to a new place. The same dream, the same words, but in a different place with different faces. (They all look the same, though. Angry. Grief-striven. Broken.) I don't know how they're going to end. I never knew how dreams were to end. Most of the time I forgot them, let them slip from my mind as easily as if they didn't exist at all. I wish that my nightmare could dissolve like that, have it disappear from my mind and wake up the way I was again. (They don't deserve that. They deserve for me to remember. They deserve for me to tell their tale - not yet. When I'm ready.) I awake to a new place with the same routine, so foreign and unlike myself and yet I know every inch of it. Every word to say, every arm to raise, every nod to give and hand to shake and seat to sit upon. (They all pass by in a blur, leaking from my ears and onto my pillow to seep back into my head when I try and fall asleep. They will not let me forget, not even in my real dreams.)

I awake exploding - screaming and yelling and frantic. And yet I do not call for help, I do not ask to be forgiven, or to forget. I gulp down my pain and feel their horrors sink into me, fall into my bloodstream and back into my memory. I do not want to forget. I will not let myself forget. I shall feel this terror every single night for the rest of my existence, feel their pain and relive the amplified horrors to remind myself what I have done, who I have lost, and what I deserve. I explode, and soak it all in, and relive my routine over and over as they plague my every move because I deserve to rot in the essence of life for being so selfish.

When they call me to the stage I turn it all of. In selfish moments I let myself slip back into the dreamworld filled with paths made for giants and watch them paint the canvas red. And then I blink, and I awake - although the darkness is where I explode and it's the middle of the afternoon and I am expected to be a puppet. People pull my limbs up and down, up and down, run words through my eyes and print them against my tongue and fashion them with my voice and play them out to the people of Panem to remind them of what they have not done. I am an instrument of fear playing across the Districts and nothing can tune me out.

(I catch his eyes and falter.)

The words stop. I linger on a single syllable that stutters through my system "I..." (an awfully familiar sound for more than one reason.) "I..." There is nothing. People shuffle. Murmurs arise. Mace is not here to hold my hand. Klaus is not here to smile. Opal is not here to sweep me into a hug. I am not here, I am not here, I am back in my dreamworld and the world begins to shatter around me like it did when I watched the light fade from Ewe's eyes except there's too much light in his eyes this time there's too much I can't see I can't it's all I no please-

"I-"

- can't look at him.

I can only scream.

"i could say it
but you won't believe me.

you say you do
but you don't deceive me.

they were kids that i once knew
now they're all dead hearts to you."
- stars, dead hearts.

"i felt very still and empty
the way the eye of a tornado must feel,

moving dully along in the middle
of the surrounding hullabaloo."
- sylvia plath, the bell jar.

I have not yet faltered until today. Something about reading out the same words over and over again in a robotic manner became easier. It shouldn't be easy, looking into their eyes and staring back with nothing, feeling the souls of their loved ones scream to touch them for one last time. It isn't, not really, but each time hurts less and less. That can only mean I am to be presented with an even more terrible fate in the near future, but feeling numb comes naturally and I, as it turns out, am terribly selfish when it comes to not feeling.

But today, today I cracked. You see some of the old victors stutter away, watch as the final traces of their unreal life disintegrate from their minds. I never realised all those years ago that I was watching my future unfold. Never would I dream of a life like this. Now, it seems I'll never wake up from it. I let out a scream and snatch it back, murmurs falling from the crowd into my hearing, but Ewe's brother walks towards me and the nightmare unfolds once more. He is the ocean, the tidal wave, the floods billowing from the ice cube and chasing me into the maze. (Some nights I wake up and I've won, like I did in reality - but some nights are different. Some nights Ewe strikes me down and I crumble into nothing and awake to everything.)

He parts the ocean of people and begins his march. I back away for a moment, stepping back into the past, and then halt as he progresses. (I dare not take my eyes off of him.) I could be selfish and protest, hide away behind Peacekeepers or doors or my own crumbling imagination. I could hide away from the noise of the world and stumble in silence as I have been doing, letting everything collapse inside of me. Or I could be brave. (He was so much braver than I. He was, he was, and he slipped away before I could bring myself to tell him.) I'm brave - I told him I was. I promised I would be brave.

I step forward - once, twice, past a Peacekeeper, and another. (Fear will not paralyse me. Not today.) Five seconds, four seconds, three seconds, two, one-

I shut my eyes and await my end.

"come away to the water
come away to the slaughter
to the ones appointed
to see this through

they are calling for you
they are coming for you."
- maroon five, come away to the water.