stitches [ s ä f f l e ]

These walls are so hollow.

In three years, I saw the only three boys ever enter this kingdom of mine walk through that door never to return. Moth eaten fabric scratches against my wrists, for some reason I've always been hand picked to rule alone. For eighteen years, I have always done my work and those of others, because the queen must the backbone, and perhaps that's where this eternal fuck up began. I saved Elverum, Axton, I watched Owen flicker from the flames of my cigarettes as I tick tick ticked the ashes off the ends of each one. I cared for my followers, that's why they always leave me.

They never know how difficult ruling your own kingdom is. Cold bites my lungs as the smoke folds from inside, blowing through my nose to cleanse myself of this paranoia, this fear (I am not afraid, I won't be, I can't) I never saw the burial of Owen Bowers-Fox, that pale face against the bricks of his fainted reality was the last time I saw that fool. And yet, burying Axton's balding head and blue protruding veins has never left my mind. Every time I blink I see it, the man I once protected fading from this world weak, he always was. My wrist flicks cigarette ashes to the wooden ground, my eyes on that old ratty television.

Axton always loved it like this, silence eating away at the marrow of his bones like cancer, cigarette in his right hand and the television playing to drown out Elverum's chanting voice. He was always so rude to him, and I let him, because one lifetime eventually I would of had to leave him. For ever he'd be my older brother, but for forever I couldn't hold his hand.

He showed that to me himself.

Day four plays through on the screen, three p.m. and he can live for another day, only nine more hours and it's day five. A fifteen year old boy before him did it, and Elverum, he's an idiot but he's my brother. His blond wisps and blue eyes, and for four days I've thought of him dead. I know my brother, I know the wall of polaroids in his room and the boy he constantly talked about, I know the boy I protected with my life born nine months before me. I know the second he stepped on that stage that an idiot he was, nothing more, he was no victor. 

Wax burns from my eyes, these cold walls surrounding me like my brother's personal hell. Idiot, fucking idiot, hungover from a night's interaction with people who'd slit his throat when the moment came to. The other district eight died, very first one, it stung like hell, a cigarette to the wrist. Watching Elverum fully exposed by himself, but it seemed like the capitol didn't care about him, nobody ever seemed to. Only every now again would he pop up, the background to some other tribute's victory; showing up only when he slices open another tribute's back, or when a mutt tears his leg open, or when he's sitting in the snow with a cripple he could kill in a heartbeat. "Fucking idiot," nobody wants to see a passive tribute live.

I hate this house, no cell in body can fathom how the hell Axton loved it; he must've loved anything worse off than himself. The hole in the kitchen wall, the cold winter winds dying in this building, molding walls and burn holes - I hate it. I hate this kingdom I've built on my teeth, I breathe again off the cigarette. It's only able to survive off this place, but I'm tired of being tired, of seeing Axton's face at night, the silence without Owen. The ice in my veins is thawing, and it's only due time for when I melt, completely, like wax of a candle. I sink into the corner of that moth-eaten silk, knees pulled to my face.

(How long until these cold castle walls collapse onto me is all I can ask myself.)

Ice shifts as he jumps alive, reanimated in the morning overcast. For a second, it's too stoic, just him in this capitol view, my fingertips shake. The clip is boring, dimmed by him drinking and eating and throwing items, and I get a migraine from watching every second he's still alive to fuck things up. A rotation in the viewer's eye and in the background I see something - an outline, three bodies, and my lungs freeze over with the air inside.

Like a switch, the camera flips to a view on a boy getting immolated, burning like Salem's return, and my eyes widen, "come on, die already asshole," give me back my brother. I inhale smoke, the edge of the cigarette lighting up from the touch of my lips, it's the three that Elverum drank with. The three he killed with, but I didn't bother learning names. The only one I need is Elverum, 

I'll name the victor.

(Exhale.)

It flips back to my brother, my Elverum, and "oh, you fucking dumbass," he's stuffing one of the bodies into his bag - monkeys. Fucking monkeys, fucking Elverum, idiot idiot idiot, my left hand clenches into a fist and I smash into the wall, echoing through the silence and whispers of wind through the hole in the wall. Fucking dumbass, don't steal the baby one ever. One claws his leg as a cannon launches, as the camera flips back to a ginger boy sitting in his own blood. Cannon, a second one, and with it the shift back to Elverum.

Fucking idiot, inhale, exhale, breath of a cigarette, he runs into a tree, laughing as if he's actually getting somewhere. Idiot, absolute idiot, he slips on ice, throwing an empty beer bottle back, there's no point. Four monkeys chase after the one he stole, and I chase after the brother I once had. Exhale, a puff of smoke, my heart beats like the gunshots of a peacekeeper, that mechanical roar beating through my every being. "Hide, come on hide, don't you fucking die day four," he jumps into a tree after launching the monkey, like an enchantment, my heart settles in the wind's cold as the four run past. Safe.

Whole, alive.

Blood sinks into the snow from his leg, cowardly in his tree stump. Burrowed, it's ridiculous, his knuckles in his mouth to suppress laughter. If he returns to me, will he even be worth protecting any more? He's broken, absolutely broken, like the lens of his polaroid I promised to replace. One day, I'll do it tomorrow. I breathe, w h o l e. For a second it's silent again, as my heartbeat resides back into my veins and Elverum sits in that tree. Smiling to himself like the idiot he is - my idiot. Sugar rushes my arms with the fading adrenaline, I grin to myself, like cheers over wine with my brother.

Air catches in my lungs as the baby begins screeching again, kill it, "kill it Elverum, kill it!" Panic resides in his eyes, those blue things strained under the weight of trying to decide which path to take and I yell, desperate, as I stomp the cigarette into the ground "kill it you fucking idiot, kill i-"

I couldn't hold his hand, nor the scream that rises through my throat as veins throb when I see the blood gurgle through his throat; my brother, my kingdom, the winds carry his last words away. Air fills my lungs in deep intakes, as anger burns my skin, blood tainting his blond hair as he tries to cover it, holding the loose threads of his skin with both hands. No, no nonoon ono no n on ono, I smash my right hand into the table end. Throwing the ash tray to the ground, glass clattering, my hands strangle the side of it before throwing the wood to the ground. Teeth flaring, this can't be happening, idiot, fucking idiot, I throw the table at that ratty television and I can't stand this silence, I can't stand the silence of my brother's death, of my kingdom fallen, of the wind through that hole in the wall, I can't take it eating at my bones for now and for always.

I fold onto the floor, hands locked around my own throat to suppress those screams once again. Wax burning the sockets of my eyes as I press my cold hands against the throbbing, protruding veins in my neck, teeth clenched; I choke on my own silence. The recording pans to the monkeys, a fucking hoard, as my brother melts into the snow, eyes dazed over. Stoic, dead. 

For eighteen years, I've refused to cry, I've taken every single shot and applied the bandaid myself. And once again, there will be no funeral, because once again there is nobody to put the bandaid over my heart except for myself. I claw at my neck, Elverum's existence dies with me, because nobody other than cares.

I f a l l with my kingdom - these hollow walls. 

table inspired by rook