terra deveranne - d3 - FIN

There are so many blows that are worse than a knife to your neck.

"I merely tripped," is what I tell them. What I don't tell them is that my father beat me and my mother stood and watched with unfazed, unblinking eyes. "I'm alright," is what I say.

Bruises, a bouquet of violets, blooming, flowering, sprinkling petals over my cheeks and back and stomach. My face is a canvas, and my father paints a picture of pain so exquisitely it's tear inducing. Every brush across my face whines and whines and whines and my eyes start to water and

no

no crying tonight.

I keep my gray eyes strong under my blackened eyelids and strong, arching brows. I am dead and alive at the same time. And yet, I am afraid of both, of life and of death, and it shows on my narrow face almost as strongly as the pain. Smooth lips pulled taut, lines of worry and anxiety etched into my forehead. My spindly fingers creep and crawl restlessly at my sides. I am the word fear, an image that walked out of the dictionary itself.

Tangled, uneven hair a dark, ashy blond, falling thinly, limply just above my shoulders. Unkept, untouched, wispy and fragile. I suppose you could use those four simple words to describe my body as well, if you omit untouched. 65 inches of willowy, skinny me, just bones and nothing else. 65 inches of broken pieces, bruises, pale skin, and fear.

There are so many words that can grace your ears that are worse than a death sentence.

You brat/You're such a little brat/You should be grateful, you brat/Don't make me tell Mommy you were being a brat

I am a dam.

I hold in my feelings and my tears. I use all my strength to hold on to having nothing at all. My problems are not anyone else's problems. It wouldn't be fair to vomit all my dumpy emotions onto anybody else. So, there's only one thing left to do. Put on a mask, a smile, a peel of laughter. Slip on a paper bag, don't let myself become an eye sore, a well of tears. Tie myself together with a couple strings of self pity and hope that it's a long time until I come undone again.

I'm not insane I'm not insane I'm not insane I'm grieving. My eyes are storm clouds, my tears are rain and my heart is thunder. I will pour and pour and pour until I am a wisp, a husk of who I was and who I could be. Sorrow curls me in, locks me up in a prison and taunts me with a sly grin. How many times I've been told to get over it, to move on, but they've never felt it. I am 102 pounds of profound sadness, a part of my heart chewed up and spit out by this wretched world. And it's slowly killing me.

I haven't said more than yes, no, please, thank you, and I'm sorry for years. I am a leaky faucet and my words are jutting bullets of water, hesitant, choppy, awkward. Keeping my lips pressed shut. Words are precious, too precious to be spent carelessly. I keep them as close as I do money, keep them by my side. There are so many word thieves to worry about, too many sly smirks and winking eyes that could make me babble on and on into oblivion.

Words are beautiful and dangerous. It's something that took a while for me to understand.

There are so many things that can happen to you that are worse than dying.

Watching the second hand as it hurdles over numbers, stumbling, tripping, falling, fluttering like her eyelids, hitching like her breath
tick
tock
your time is up.

My parents weren't always so bad. A couple outbursts here and there, but they were young, and had two girls that were more than they could handle. But my older sister and I seemed to get reined in once we knew they had enough. But it slowly escalated, turned to slaps and insincere apologies to Elizabeth and I shaking in a corner under a pile of dirty clothes, hoping our parents were too hungover to notice. Playing hide-and-go-seek did have its benefits, after all. And under the suffocating fabric my sister and I made a promise.

We were going to get through this together.

She died on a Friday. It was a nice day, sunny weather, like Ripred was bracing me for the trials to come. My father had beaten her bloody while I hid in the closet. I was a coward, my knees pressed to my chest, wincing at every thud as if it were me. I sat in wary silence, cramped in the darkness. With my slight fear of closed spaces and my profound fear for my sister, I felt too petrified to even move. But when I could hear no more screams, no more hits, I emerged, glad it was over, glad I could rush to my sister without being threatened.

It didn't take long to process. It didn't take long for me to realize Elizabeth was running out of breaths, shallower and shallower each time. It didn't take long for me to realize that her beautiful blue eyes were staring at nothing, not me. What it did take long to realize was that I was now a dead soul in an alive body and my sister was an alive soul in a dead body.

They tried to patronize me, my parents. I think there was some nook in the back of their minds, full of cobwebs and untouched thoughts, that made them feel too. That made them horrified about what they did. They bought me clothes, they refurnished my room, they took much of their large budget and put it solely on me. They could afford it, being inherently rich, but it would never work. They thought they could buy me off with lavish accessories and a few good meals. But I won't ever forgive them, and I don't think they'll ever forgive themselves. I shouldn't be so selfish, I shouldn't be so happy that what they did was torture and it slowly tears them apart.

Sometimes I hear them crying, and those are the days they hit me the least. I relish the tears in a way that feels almost monstrous.

No one ever believed me when I said that Elizabeth didn't commit suicide. They all just laughed, they just said I was a silly little girl, and that my parents were the nicest people they had ever known. They said I was delirious from sadness, and that I was looking for someone to blame.

There are so many people to blame. Elizabeth, for whatever she did wrong. My parents, for being merciless, for buying too much liquor.

Me, for not intervening. For feeling that awful, terrible, light-headed relief that came when I wasn't me.

Me, for being broken and afraid when Elizabeth would want me mending and brave.

I was never like her. I'm a coward.

ODAIR