harlow {{ district three, cb

harlow {♔} porter

Ariel means the lion of ripred, the books always draw it as golden and brave and the loudest of all, and I think it does because my sister is supposed to be an Ariel, with the same bronze straw that matches mine and the dark circles that ring around her eyes like the bruises lining down my arms like tattoos. My parents probably never thought of how fitting the name would be- they never thought of my existence either, a twin to Ariel was less welcomed than a tumour- considering they also named me Harlow, literally meaning an army. An army and a lion, yet Ariel was always the pride, to me at least. Every so often her blood would be linked back to me because of a certain anemia and leucopenia and thromboctyopenia, which all have definitions traced into the back of my mind like the splotches against my feet whenever I wear socks too tight for very long (very long, in my house, never meant very long, but if we replaced all the shorts with longs and all the longs with shorts, life is full of surprises).

And even though Ariel stands tall and I can't stand at all, with my dying army of one being eaten by a single acronym (apl; acute promyelocytic leukemia, it means I have a grocery shop of symptoms) somehow both our parents are caught more up in my tangled breathes reeking with dyspnea than in the mirror image save for decay. As Ariel is only another casualty by the bomb in a birdcage that is my life.