mistaken identity }} Odessa x Crescent }} rave

crescent { ☆ } avos

Often I find myself like this, adamantine rocks jabbing into the pale of my hand like mountains stabbing the surface of clouds, each second of scraping uncomfort lacing into my veins like lucid dreams and I swear I can feel the earth; not just feel, but feel, you feel, like it's talking to me in pain because it's all it knows how to. Like after all the years of existing and watching and feeling, and watching all the suffering that offers day after day, all it wants is to share the pain, let other's carry the burden rather than let it sit all on its lonesome. But it never happens you see, it spends all it's time chasing the moon and back searching for all the whys and hows in the universe, except it never happens; the earth is always, and will forever be, unhappy. My father always told me that, before he went after his own questions that is, he always went on and on about the stars and how they always spoke to the mountains scattered on Panem like freckles, and how constellations hold our intentions in their hearts because they're always watching, but I reckon they get lonesome sometimes. With all the loud noises and bright lights in the cities around the district and all, they go unnoticed, they just want to be felt too.

The earth rubbed against the threads of my clothes as I lay down on it like a child on their father's bloated belly, but that's what I am in a sense, the earth's child, not literally, my parents are Xavier and Ingrid Avos, but like I said, in a sense; it sees us once we enter the world as a fat heap of tears and it sees us as we dance against its skin, and it watches us as we die slowly in front of it and are buried into it's skin like tattoos. That's why Graveyards give people the creeps, rubs them the wrong way, because those are the places the earth feels the most, (that's another thing my father told me, a lunatic some people named him but that's because they're too far feeling for only themselves). It wasn't fair, to the earth I mean, all it wants is for happiness to lick at its skin and for everything to be peaceful, but everything is too busy trying to ruin it, tearing down trees and killing each other like it's a thing more important than nature. But the earth isn't ashamed, it understands, true happiness can't exist, because once all the evil is gone, more evil will eclipse; once one games end another begins. Leaving everything in one cycle of hatred, because that's the one thing we can measure.

Avid air licks at my skin in energy, like an old friend, the stars above my existence spinning and dancing and beaming down at me and it's like a family reunion, it's like they've missed me without ever having the pleasure of leaving me (because that's what happens, you become content with the environment and then it changes, the pieces you rely on leave to find their own questions and leave just you, wondering if the questions are all that much to look for). They blanket me in condolences because it almost feels like I can feel them against my skin, kissing and pecking my sprawled right arm like a new found mother and tucking my body in covers, but the only thing touching my legs are pants and my chest is only met with a stained shirt. But that's okay, it's okay. They're a million light years away but they feel like they are right here, and that's okay. It's okay.

Sometimes I wonder what my father still think of me if he caught me in the strange places I wind up in, resting in alleyways counting the stars like long lost cousins or wasting on roofs because that way I'm at least a few steps closer to them. Each star is barely centimeters apart but I'm still stuck always four feet away, no matter where I go, but the walls of this alley way feel like a jacket against my soul, strapping me in to the point of suffocating on my own unspoken words. But that's okay, because if I squint hard enough they look giants, and it looks like I climb up them and into the stars, and then I'll be able to see everything, and I'll find my father and I'll find my father's whys and hows and whens and I'll find my own whys and hows and whens running a muck without me and I'll smile because I'll know what it feels like to be the earth, and then the earth will smile too because it'll finally know that somebody else can feel the same feels.

But then my eyes open back from blinking back lashes and I know it'll never happen, because no matter how close to the stars I get, I'll always be at least four feet too far away, and the stars will always four feet too far away, and I close my eyes again, because in all the darkness it feels like I am my own cosmos and I know it's insane to think about, but then I'll have everybody's whys and hows wrapped in the stars around me and I'll have all the questions they'll ever dream of and the answers they'll never ponder across because it all feels like one silly dream. Except I'll never four feet away from the cosmos, because we're all cosmos, a collection of every star and planet and moon rotating around our brains like a system of gears and pullies because we're all that too.

Instead of an infinity of four feet or a perpetual centimeter, all I'm worried about is three feet, except they aren't limitless, their boundaries are well defined in every aspect of the living because they feel. But I wished I didn't, one of the feet pressed against my face pretty hard in all honesty, my closed eyes remaining shut because the blinding white light didn't remind me of a star but the one time our oven caught on fire and mother panicked and threw salt on it and rushed me out of the house and we had to get a new cutting board the next day and Lethe's tail was singed and mother snickered in silence because he looked ever more broken and I snickered in silence because all three of us looked ever more broken. The other two feet were my own, the wore down flats fitting comfortably in the palms of somebody else's, and I didn't panic because panicking is synonyms with chaos.

"“Oh boy, I have a dead boy in my hands and now I am trying to hide the boy. Oh boy what is happening.”"

The words making an atmosphere of their own, swirling into each other above my face as I open my eyes; the buildings no longer look like giants and the stars look more than four feet away and the fire is gone and I am existent. Words were never my strong suit, fumbling around my mouth like shooting stars except they needed their own wishes just to come out right, except those wishes were riddled with typos to the point where my wishes needed even more wishes and the chain continues until my mother's chuckles interrupt because I am the cosmos and I get lost in myself. Adamantine rocks jabbing into the pale of my hand like mountains stabbing the surface of clouds, but I am no longer the clouds and the rocks are no longer mountains, because I recollect myself, my own gravity pull acting on the legs I call my own because they are so, and I sit up because I no longer feel the earth but rather myself, a cerise scratching onto my cheeks.

I am the cosmos, I am the stars, I am the earth,

"I'm not dead," dirt clinging to my hand and back and legs and face from the bottom of this person's own leg and my throat, my hand grasping the tangled fabric above my knee and I'm Crescent,

"Just Crescent."