as you sail from me {eye&cal}

"the colour of my eyes is made
with the words "please,
don't leave."

they are quite
dark, you know."
- untitled, the river speaks.

I am too furious to fight back anymore. So I sink - not under water, no. I sink into arms that tower over me, that pull me down into the ocean but promise I will not drown. (Calypso can't swim! Calyspo can't swim! - no, Perdita, I cannot swim against this current without him and he's gone and gotten himself all but killed. Are you happy, Dita? Did I get what I deserve?) I know what drowning feels like but it doesn't feel like this. Drowning comes with a depseration in yourself that tastes like hope - a hope that you shall break the surface and life will fill your lungs once more. Someone will drag you up or you'll fight, kicking and screaming and throwing your bleeding fists at the daylight, to reach the surface. No, this doesn't feel like drowning. Because I know I won't breathe again.

Not until I let go. The Peacekeeper outside the door won't disturb us, but there's Capitol people waiting to steal him away and I can't seem to lessen my grip upon him. My arms feel like lead and I tremble - half furious and half utterly devastated but I cling to him like he is oxygen and remember how to breathe. I don't want to hear his words but they're all I have - I've already forgotten what his voice sounds like and he hasn't even finished speaking. How dare you how dare you how dare you thuds through my head and even though my arms are too tired to move, the echo still drums through my system. I'm being terribly selfish in this moment, but I've always been selfish and he never has.

"I thought you'd be proud" he says, and then I'm furious once again because that's what I'm supposed to be, isn't it? That's what everybody thinks I'm supposed to be. I am, I am supposed to be proud but I'm not and I hate myself for it. I hate that I'm standing here submerged in nothing but him, I hate that I let myself get here. I hate that I was weak, I hate that I was everything I'm not supposed to be, and I hate that he's the only person in the world who's ever seen me this way. (Who ever will.)

"Don't..." I seethe, forcing words from my stammering lips. "Don't." I feel his heart beneath his chest and listen for his song, memorizing every beat of life to sing across the District. I don't want to be one of them, I don't want to pretend that his life is meaningless, just another could-of-been or should-of-been or how-disappointing-let's-try-again-next-year. No, I'll sing his song like I sung that pirate tune all those nights ago when I first stumbled upon my criminal and paint the canvas of my life with shaking strokes of memory. (Look at you now, little tattletale. How far you've come.)

"I'm not proud. I'm not anything."

I dare myself to look at him, my weakness, now my dwindling strength.

"I never was. Was I?"

"alarms will ring for eternity
the waves will break every chain on me.

with all the blood i lost for you
it drowns the love i thought i knew."
- ellie goulding, my blood.

"the colour of my eyes is made
with the words "please,
don't leave."

they are quite
dark, you know."
- untitled, the river speaks.

How could you let him slip away the first time. Were you not letting the future unfold in that single moment when he fell out of your grasp? Idiot girl. You should have run faster, jumped higher, screamed louder. And why did you chase him when you knew how it would end? Something deep inside of you knew that he would slip away to his own accord because that is how he lives (and dies): as he pleases. There were no reports of your words or forms signed by your hand that told of this criminal in the night. Sure, the mural was plastered over by disgruntled Peacekeepers who drew the short end of the stick and you batted your eyes and played pretend but your eyes lingered over the art for a little too long and your heart sunk ever so slightly at the sight of his soul being hidden from the world.

How could you be so weak, to crumble so effortlessly, to not even stop to think about what you were doing? (How could you be so human, Calypso? How could you dare?) You decided that criminals had feelings too. And they intrigued you, made you curious. And then you started to feel guilty, feel his sorrow and heartache, catching his hand whenever he began to stare off into the distance, wait for him by the docks every morning to sit in comfortable silence. You've always had secrets from everyone around you - but not him. He became your secret, your truth holder, raw honesty spilling from your seams stitched so tightly with the need to be right and just. And he painted your soul across the District a hundred times over: outside your school, your home, your driveway. What once made you scoff now made you sigh into smiles and skip through the streets with a secret dancing against your tongue.

How could you think that you could be enough? That you could fill a hole gaping in his chest, ripped open right in front of your very eyes. How could you be so stupid as to think a slithering river like yourself could flood the entire ocean? What you thought were honest truths now seem like silly little whispers floating through the air, strands of nothing to cling to because walking away was easy and you've always longed for a challenge. And then walking away became less and less easy and more and more hard until you did now know how to move in any direction but forward. Backwards had long since been forgotten. You were a shadow in the night, a drop in the ocean, a blink in the whole of time itself. You are nothing, and you were nothing, and you always will be.

Love is for silly little girls who get their hearts broken, Tattle-tale. (Do those words sound familiar?) But you don't care. You hate your past self for thinking those things. You've always hated yourself a little bit for what you did, even if you didn't want to believe it. Now you don't know what to believe. You look at him and the floods begin again because nobody has ever looked at you like that before. Nobody ever will - how could they? You are a mess. You are a murdering, death-sentencing mess who could never love anyone but her two best friends and a criminal. (Art is not a crime, but this love between you is.) You listen to him and you smile through tears because he loves you, he loves a silly little girl who can't ever do anything right but he still loves you anyway - it's just taken you too long to realise. He is chaos, he says - this is chaos: wonderful, bitter, awful chaos, but you'd rather spend a heartbeat in this hullabaloo than an eternity without it. And it looks like you shall do both instead.

You don't know how to tell him. All of these years telling the truth (and lying a little bit, too) and you can't summon one little word that could mean everything and anything. You wish he could paint out your words for you, for him to reach into your soul and sprawl it out for the world to see, but the clock is ticking down and you're the red-handed one, but blood is not paint and fingernails are no tool of art.

You're angry. You're chaos. You're everything in-between. And you're silent, and speechless, and most importantly in love.

So you kiss him instead.

"alarms will ring for eternity
the waves will break every chain on me.

with all the blood i lost for you
it drowns the love i thought i knew."
- ellie goulding, my blood.

"the colour of my eyes is made
with the words "please,
don't leave."

they are quite
dark, you know."
- untitled, the river speaks.

There's an echo in my head that's pulling me away. It sounds an awful lot like my own voice ready to drag someone into the depths of the ocean and swallow them down to an impending doom. I know, I know, I know it sings, and I think it's my head telling my unspoken conscience that I understand. I know that siblings will do anything and everything for their brothers and sisters because they feel that it's right. I know that when they fail, guilt eats them away. I know that sometimes when you feel like you can't do anything without fucking it up opportunities come your way for you to save someone. And even if everybody else around you tells you that it's wrong, you save them anyway. Because it's the right thing to do. I know, I know, I know.

I remember when we exchanged very little words. Sometimes not at all. We'd sit, and stare out at the ocean, and submerge ourselves in comfortable silence. The only conversations were in our heads, in our touch, in slight glances as we sat and thought. I never thought badly of those moments before - I liked the silence. Sometimes, silence is all someone needs. Presence can be enough. Simple gestures can be enough. Now I loathe them, hating the fact that I did not say more, did not do more in those times that now rob us of what could be, what should be .I wish, I wish, I wish. I know, I know, I know.

I know that I have to be the one to say goodbye.

He can't be the one to leave me. No, Calypso Leto will not let this fate rule her. He is everything to me and I am furious and I don't want to let him go but if I don't let myself sink to the bottom of the ocean I'll never resurface again. I kissed him like I meant it, I kissed him because words were not enough, I ingrained my essence into him to let him know that I'll always be there. Always. He is my silent secret, my downfall, the one person I've let myself be weak for and I'd do it a thousand times over because the pain I'm feeling right now tells me it was real. In a world of truth I had never felt real. I had hidden behind a masquerade bestowed upon me by whatever forces that drove me to be me. Telling the truth hurt. Lying felt even worse. Saying nothing at all - well, that was easier. Silence became my comfort, and maybe that's why I always came back. We said so much with nothing at all.

I know, I know, I know.

I smile, and take his hand, and squeeze it so tightly my fingers might disintegrate. And then the hard part comes, and I learnt to step backwards. Once, twice, three times. (I don't ever drop his gaze.) And the door handle is pressing into my back and my hands are still shaking and the floods prepare for their final round but I have to do this, I have to, I simply must. I know, I know, I know. (I tell him with my eyes.)

And then the door closes in front of me and I sink, slowly and all at once, to the bottom of the ocean floor.

"alarms will ring for eternity
the waves will break every chain on me.

with all the blood i lost for you
it drowns the love i thought i knew."
- ellie goulding, my blood.