TEMPEST VEGA, DISTRICT 3

✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ Graphics 5,831 POSTS Pronouns: they/them last seen Apr 15, 2024 16:57:38 GMT -5 “And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” - steinbeck	TEMPEST VEGA, DISTRICT 3 Mar 25, 2014 7:09:44 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ on Mar 25, 2014 7:09:44 GMT -5 TEMPEST VEGA SIXTEEN DISTRICT 3 HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT/ASTRONOMER STRAIGHT FC: RACHEL BARAN SONG: STAY HIGH - HIPPIE SABOTAGE POEM BY F. BUTLER OTHER CHARACTERS ODAIR
	Last Edit: May 19, 2014 5:58:48 GMT -5 by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ compendium / avriel clown car / pietro 2022 tracker / 2023 tracker / 2024 tracker

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5,831 POSTS
Pronouns: they/them
last seen Apr 15, 2024 16:57:38 GMT -5

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” - steinbeck

TEMPEST VEGA, DISTRICT 3 Mar 26, 2014 5:17:24 GMT -5

Quote

Post by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ on Mar 26, 2014 5:17:24 GMT -5

[presto]

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It aches to feel my bones beneath my skin, as if they are there at all and not somewhere else like they said they might be. When I breathe, my ribs fill hollow, thin as toothpicks and equivalent to the weight of starlight. It is odd that they are the centennials that guard this heart. The war drums sound behind them but they don't even flinch. I wait with baited breath, wondering when they might crack and twist around to face their true enemy. Everyone knows that you can't trust anybody, least alone yourself. My brother taught me that.

"You smile like a knife," is the first thing you ever said to me and it always made me wonder how a knife might smile. I never considered the fact that I should be wondering why you saw a sharpness in the first place. What is a blade but something used to cut? I've never been able to find anything scathing to say in my entire life. My voice is as dull and blunt as the ends of my hair. I inspect the crescent moons that serve as fingernails but I can't ever recall digging them into my own skin, however the scars prove otherwise. There is a sharpness to me, I suppose. I have edges that are generally hard and I suppose it makes sense seeing as the last time we met, you cut me in two, siphoned me off right down the middle and now I can never seem to get along with myself. I'm bloody ridiculous.

She keeps following me around. I can hear her creeping around this big old house all the time, as if tip toeing will make it less obvious that she is there. I'll be laying in the darkness of underneath my bed and I'll watch her socked feet slide on the old and worn hardwood. She'll look for me but she's too smart to look under the bed because that is where everyone hides, she knows how I feel about stereotypes. I've taken to locking my door at night but it never helps because she knows exactly how to pick the lock and we wear the same hairpins, pointed and perfect for the job.

She wants to kill me, she wants my blood on her hands. Sometimes I want to kill me too, but not me, I want to kill her but that would be a lot like killing myself because I suppose I would be. Sometimes I think on it so hard that I have to make myself a cup of tea just to calm down. She likes her's black but I take mine with a splash of milk and raw sugar if you have it. Every now and then we'll have a regular conversation, for once not at odds with each other.

Mostly I'm afraid of her but I'm afraid of a lot of things, like arrows and bugs that flap in my face. The faceless one is also something that I'm afraid of but he never comes around much so I don't worry too hard. Sometimes I see him outside beside the tree, leaning his massive hulk against it, not even trying to hide himself. I'l cup my chin in my hands and rest my elbow on the desk, the end of my pencil stuck between my teeth. Sometimes I think that if I don't stare back at his smooth features he'll move closer and closer until he can touch me but the clawed hands would not be comfortable. My teacher calls it daydreaming when I stare out the window like that but it always feels more like a nightmare.

She's always telling me I don't get enough sleep but that's because I have to watch for him outside. If he comes near and I take my eyes off of him for more than a second than it'll be trouble. I don't know what he'll do if he ever makes it to me but I don't have reason to believe it will be good. My brother always said you can't trust anyone. As long as I watch for him, I have to be safe.

She says she wants to protect me but the knife she carries on her waist looks deadly. If she can squash me she could keep the monsters at bay far easier. That's why I'm the one who goes to school and she's the one who stalks the hallways and the grounds, looking for the monster, the arrows, the flapping bugs that are so insistent on reaching me. I don't believe her. I've never believed anyone, I've always taken their words at half value because I know now that people will lie, will say anything to swindle you, to cheat you. I lie, that's how I know. It's so easy to lie that my face doesn't even change when I know I'm not telling the truth. Whoever says that they don't lie is probably lying.

He lied to me once, at least I think it was once. Sometimes I sit in the dark, secure inside my closet, analyzing all of the other things he taught me. He could have lied to me with every single word he spoke and I wouldn't know. It's hard when my brother said so many words, phrases that started when I was little and finished when I was fourteen. There could have been hundreds of little lies that he told me, like when he said I needed to brush my teeth when I woke up and before I went to bed because otherwise they'd rot out of my skull. Was that a lie? Or when he'd tell me what mom and dad were like, saying I had mom's eyes but dad's hair. Were those lies?

I don't know, that's the scary part. I can't tell if I was raised on a foundation of lies or if he only ever spoke the truth. He always told me not to trust anyone because people will betray you to save their own skins, no matter what. That was probably the only truth he ever told me. I can't help thinking about how he left me. ("Will you stay with me forever?") He said that he wouldn't. ("Forever and ever kid, until you are sick and tired of seeing me.") Maybe forever means different things to different people. I was trying to figure this out.

Then I thought of the stars, so beautiful and bright. They seem to be the most constant things in life, even if there is cloud it is known that they are still there, watching us all. It's only the porch light though, they left long ago. (Everyone will betray you.) That light that we see is a light that is more ghost then real. (Everyone will leave you.) The real star died long ago, all that we are seeing on earth is it's afterthought. It's like anything else really, it's making it's promise even as it fades out. I wonder if stars had anyone to smooth back their hair when they were sick, or to tell them stories of their mother. The thing about stars is that they seem so close together but are really light years apart. I fear that there is no one to love them, so I love them all.

I don't always tell the truth.

If I did, would you miss me?

I gave my best shell necklace to my friend Natalie the other day. I don't know why I did. She asked me for it and there was such an intensity in her eyes, so faint, but there. I couldn't even remember where the necklace came from. One of the stalls in the market, I suspect. I wanted to please her, so I undid it's clasp and before I knew it, I was folding it into her hands. I liked that necklace quite a bit.

I'm spreading myself thin so that I will have a good excuse when I finally fall apart. "She spread herself too thin," they'll say as they shake their heads in a morose manner, "We could all see it coming, the poor dear." I've always liked the term too. I just want to carry it all, to leave pieces of myself with everyone, so that pockets of me can still resist even after I am gone.

I suppose that's one of the things I worry about most when I peak through the folds of my curtain window to look at the faceless man outside, ten feet tall and dark as night. If I am gone, what light will keep shining to remember me by? I have left nothing behind to say that I will remain, vigilant even in death. My parents are gone, my brother is gone. All that I have is her and I but I suspect that when I go, she will come with me and this big, old, empty house will become only bigger and only emptier.

I cannot sleep at night because when I sleep I dream and when I dream it's never about anything nice. People tend to think that I am very well put together. Oddly enough, the look that I receive most is one of envy. I do not know why this is.

I remember one night, I was sitting with my back against the door. She sat on the other side, whispering things through the wood. He was at the window, closer than he'd ever been before. I was idle, wondering what it was that even kept me here. Why did I bother staying, why did I bother living?

Starlight.

The chance to see the stars each night. She can come for me with her knife everyday, chase me through the halls and he can be there, waiting to embrace me and take me down kicking and screaming. As long as I can survive each day to watch the sun set and see the stars come out, I will be happy.

It's true that happiness is hard to find in times like these. Every one is always talking about times like these and how we have to be tough because one day it will get better and our thick skins will have saved us. Well I've read a book or two and they are always talking about 'times like these' and it's gotten me thinking that it won't ever get better. The time we have is the time we are stuck with and even if it kills me I suppose I'll just have to live with it.

I'm not sure what people think when I loop my arm through theirs and smile in the friendliest way I can manage. I don't know if they know that the reason I so desperately maintain my throne at the top of the food chain at school is simply because I know that if I am left alone, something or other will kill me soon enough. I'm not safe by myself because of the faceless, faithless man and the girl that stalks the night looking to do me in.

I go for walks in the woods because I am attempting to live deliberately as I was told to. I don't know what the opposite is. I suppose it's to just sit around doing nothing and I have done a lot of that too. There's something wonderful about the daylight too though, not just stars. I love it the most when it's cold and one expels breath, creating a steam because the breath expelled is hotter than the air it is being introduced to.

Sometimes I walk in the woods until my limbs go numb and cold, the sun sets and the stars come out. I can never find my way out when that happens, but I don't ever really mind. The dark has never scared me as much as the day has, I was was made for the night I think. I wanted it since I could understand what the difference was. Things can be hidden in the night that come out clear and brittle in the day. For example, the night my brother left me.

Or perhaps it's better to say that it was the night he didn't return.

All that matters was that in the morning he wasn't there, like he promised he'd be. (You can't trust any one Tem, not even me.) Everyone will lie. I got good at lying because of that. I tell anyone and everyone who asks that my brother is there, just sickly so they won't put me in an orphanage. No one cares to check because they don't want a mess on their hands and if there is one truth I know for sure, it's that I am a big, stringy mess. I can't find my loose ends.

Sometimes I suppose the reason I go into the woods is really to look for them. I'm certain that if I just choose one path and follow it for as long as I can, I'll find the end of me and that will be that. I always hit the fence before I make it to the end of the path and that's how it is. I can see the path continuing on, see my thread there, patient, waiting for me to take it up again. There is chain link electricity in my way. I don't understand what I'm expected to do, other than turn away with a sigh and begin following a different knotted line. No matter how hard I search, I never find the ends. I do however, see her among the trees.

My other self seems to love to stalk me. She thinks herself stealthy, but I am always aware of her. I wait for her to get the courage to take me down but for all her hatred for me, she seems to love me. It occurs to me that she and the faceless man are the only ones I can trust to remain constant and fixed. It's a shame really. The two I would rather be without are the ones I am stuck with.

Like stars, they are. The difference is, I love stars. I can't explain why. I only know that when I look up at the sky my heart seems to ache for want. I don't know what a star might give me, other than a quick death by burning alive in a matter of milliseconds. They are beautiful, I want to cup one in my hands and press it against my heart to feel it's freezing warmth. A tenderness comes over me when I gaze at the sky and I believe in things like love and hope. When the sun rises, it's warmth and fire dashes out the other stars and seizes the day for it's self. I want to be the stars, I want to be a sun to a solar system, to be loved.

I bleached my hair until it was brittle and bright just to become lighter. I dressed my hair in honey and lemon to give it life again. I wanted to be a sun too, to get rid of my own darkness, I thought changing my appearance might help my outlook on life, might disguise the fear and hatred that lives inside of my rib cage but it did nothing but garner compliments. People said that it made my eyes bluer, my skin prettier. Aesthetically, I was pleasing to them. I suppose that's good enough.

I compare myself to other teenaged girls and I think I might be pretty. It's hard to tell sometimes because I'm not sure what people measure it against. Everyone looks completely different to me, so I can't figure out what it is that makes a person pretty. With some research I discovered that people liked small noses. Odd, but alright I suppose. I measured mine and it sticks out a centimeter or two. I hope that is alright. I get nervous about it sometimes and press a finger to my nose, trying to press it down.

The next thing I notice that people pay attention to is the lips. For some reason lips are really important. Girls use them for a lot, I watched my friends in class one day and they kept biting their lips, or sucking on the bottom one, specifically when there was a boy looking. The boys seemed to like the way that they bit their lips too. I began to bite my lips as well, and now my bottom one often feels swollen, I tend to worry too much at it, especially when I am scared. I like the taste in my mouth.

My favourite feature are the hands. Long thin hands, short and chubby hands, hands with lovely nails, hands with funny thumbs, hands that are callused and hands that are soft. I really like hands. It's because they tell so much about a person, I think. I like it best when people gesture with them, or use them during dance, making odd but lovely movements in the air. I love it when people bend their hands into fists and the knuckles stick out all bumpy. Or the way that a person holds a pen. The way a person eats with a fork and knife, even better, the way a person plucks a string or presses down the keys on a piano. I love hands that know what they are doing better than the person, I love to watch fingers dance of their own accord. Hands fascinate me. My own fingers are thin and knobby, the veins tend to stick out on the back of my hands and they are forever in a state of being cold. I adore them.

I got lost once, on the main floor of my house. For every step I took, the floor boards creaked somewhere else in the house. Every footfall gave rise to some spirit, some demon of the past. The faceless man was content to watch from the living room window. Every time I passed him, I decided to look only forward at the wall, as if I could ignore him and make him not be there. However, he is always there and my fancies are sad, pitiful things. Hope is a wild bird here, untamed and full of resistance. I do not often feel it.

I am tired of this.

[presto]

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Last Edit: May 19, 2014 9:24:31 GMT -5 by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

compendium / avriel
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✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ Graphics 5,831 POSTS Pronouns: they/them last seen Apr 15, 2024 16:57:38 GMT -5 “And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” - steinbeck	TEMPEST VEGA, DISTRICT 3 May 19, 2014 6:04:25 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ on May 19, 2014 6:04:25 GMT -5 She's done I think, I hope she makes enough sense
	compendium / avriel clown car / pietro 2022 tracker / 2023 tracker / 2024 tracker

cass Retired Staff 4,822 POSTS last seen Oct 24, 2021 18:11:43 GMT -5	TEMPEST VEGA, DISTRICT 3 May 19, 2014 6:50:27 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by cass on May 19, 2014 6:50:27 GMT -5 this is so perfect <333 ACCEPTED!