bird ivy-middleton | d12 | fin

There’s them, and then there’s you. That’s how you see it at least. Everyone else seems to rise effortlessly from the cracked ground and reach the skyline, cascading into the clouds and beyond. But when it comes to you, and the people in a similar situation, you find yourself working hard for seconds that tick-tock on and hours that pass like a century. Each and every single one of you hopes that there is something at the end; a light at the end of the tunnel – but as you grow, the realisation crashes onto your shore with force, and before you know it, you’re stranded. You’re stuck on an island of misfortune, which goes by the name of “District Twelve”, leaving you with "no exit", but there's a secret escape one you've found.

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But still, you manage to twirl – your golden locks sway behind you in the cool blue breeze. They float happily in the bone-crunching air, oblivious to the darkness and depression which spreads around the world in which you live. When a person observes you, they always notice your eyes: perky and sweet. It’s like they look out onto life with a ground-breaking new light which spreads positivity and happiness. In reality, they are nothing more than a part of the body that allows you to see and you know that. Yet, you think of them as more because you want to feel special.

You’ve never understood why people are jealous of you. They look at you and see perfection and beauty, but when you take a look at yourself in a dreary puddle on a damp day – you see all the opposites. You hate your face because you think it’s chubby, and you hate your hair because it become greasy since you can only wash it once every few days. You don’t understand it, and neither do I, but you handle it with care and just offer the person some recognition, in the form of a fake smile.

‘Get up and get on’ is your work ethic. Nothing good will ever come out of anything if you don’t put the effort in. It’s reflected in homework and school grades – it’s reflected in the customer reviews in that rotting corner shop’s guestbook. You don’t understand people who lack concentration or decisiveness. It’s probably because you find it hard to work with people who are so completely different. You don’t want their laziness to rub off on you and affect the way that you are.

You find it easy to work, but you find it hard to talk. You open your mouth and all the words that were ready to flow out, suddenly run dry. No one knows what it is about you that makes you this way – not even you. Whether it is anxiety or fear, or just trying to blend in and be forgotten about. The odds make your parents believe it’s the latter. Why: because everything is better when you’re invisible.

Anyone who knows anything about you knows that you’re very artistic. It shows in just about everything you do. Writing and drawing interested you at a very young age. Your parents thought they had a child prodigy on their hands. As you grew, you became more and more immersed in your creative abilities and you’re only just starting to realise why. It gives you the chance to become someone you’re not and it gives you the voice you fail to have. You can do anything in stories – from going on a quest for a rare orchid, to leading a rebellion. 

Once upon a time, there was a girl inside of you who loved to explore the world. Do you remember the time you climbed a tree and made the giant leap from the tall oak to one on the other side? I do. What about the time that you crawled underneath and entered a world none of us dare to enter? I do. We thought that it was your naivety that took you to those places; your hunger and thirst to explore attracted you into the unknown. But we were wrong. You loved the outdoors so much because it’s where you wanted to be. At the age of eleven, you didn’t want to be cooped inside a fenced of area. You wanted to be the hero like in all of those stories you’d written. 

No one knew what you got up to in the openness of the woodlands. You’d be the only one to ever know, but you told me. You told me all about the time you befriended a snail and accidentally killed it when scrambling back home and I know all about when you took all those pretty flowers and berries to make a “wild bouquet” for mother when she was sick. I had an inkling as to where you stumbled across those plants, but I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about my innocent little sister, breaking the rules and evading the peacekeepers’ watch. Yet, the thought of you doing it to make someone else feel better was comforting.

I know you’ve been back there since then. It’s our secret. You’d told me one night when you couldn’t sleep. I remember it: your head on my shoulder, my hand running through your hair, pulling slightly as to try and remove any worries. Now I know that it didn’t work – because you still find comfort between the trees and in the tall grass. You’ve got better at hiding how you do it, but I still worry that one day you’ll be caught and murdered before my very eyes. You’ve just got to keep doing it and get better at it, or stop it once and for all. The latter would stop me from lying awake at night.