sonnet for the birds ❀ aceline

Dear Brady.

I never know what to say, for seventeen years and four, five, six months. There's never anything to say, or write or hum or breathe, it's all just existing. An Avox by genetics, that's all I am. All this silence a product of seventeen years worth of training, I've counted the months. For six more months I'm an orphan, in the eyes of the ward. I'm a child of the lost, and the December winds will adopt me soon. In its motions, it'll take me captive once more and I won't be alone for once, I will be one word. Free.

Eighteen.

An adult, a single being for once, living on my own two feet and one soul and two eyes and no voice. No longer a lost child - that's something I never was. My brother held that title above his head, branded it on his shoulder and vanished in the spring dusk and I was alone, only Esrooke and I. Esrooke, Esrooke if only, Esrooke, he hadn't even made it to spring, only the winter air. February, I breathed heavy, and he breathed no more and half my heart felt cracked, and the other half felt steel. Unbreakable, I felt for a short moment - how strange is that. For a moment, in that last second I was completely broken and charred and ten thousand pieces. And I breathed in the stars.

Well, Dear Brady, it's only a scribble, but I do not feel broken. I do not feel lost or charred, I feel only the air in my lungs and the stars dotted in my skin - I am alone. I am forgotten and an orphan, but that's only for a second. For four, five six months, I am free by the sixes, and anew by the sevens, and until then I am strung together by cellophane. 

And I never know what to write, neither do the other girls. It's a life bred in orphanages and I'm still standing, there's always a lining. Even with all its holes, the moon still shines, and even with all its holes my heart still beats, and that's one thing the stars have never been able to claim. My mother and my Esrooke, without a doubt, and my father and Spades maybe, but I am still beating and taping and walking and working. There is nothing to write, because in the nights I count the seconds, the heartbeats and the coughs in a room shared by four. And in the mornings, I count the light feet tapping and the minutes - we live by clockwork. It's something my brother always loved, and it clicks in my ears our mechanism. I wash glasses and windows and I see birds and the sun, and I see more than four graves on my life line.

I see a sonnet for the birds, in the tunes I hum. 

Dear Brady.

I see the brown in your hair at night, and the warmth in your eyes that are the last thing I can call home. During nights when the heartbeats are in the seconds, I can see the stars you kissed me under, and I can see the trees whispering to our train cart's window and our hotel room for a night. And during those nights, I see home, and I hear your heart beat and your soft whistles and an empty city. In six months, I breathe air again and each second counts in Esrooke's voice, I swear. While I watch the windows, I see him with birds and fountains and I see his sonnet for the birds, just like I see the brown in your hair and the home in your eyes.

There's nothing to say.

For seventeen years there's been nothing to say, only heart beats and hums, and I feel the birds in my marrow and the sixes are still. I never held his hand for the last time - Spades, Esrooke, Brady. Spades ran with my brother's words, and Esrooke fell into the dusk alone, and in the dark I'm scared I will too. And I never had the chance to swear to Brady, to cross hearts with him and hold his hands in mine and swear that for months - one, two, three at the time I heard only monotone - I would be okay. And I ran from that house with my brother broken and the silence kept, I ran not for help but for sanctuary. I let my brother die, and I never had a chance to clean the blood from my hands.

Sickness and abandon run in my veins, and I never dreamed to be the last one standing. 

There was never a promise of a second decent day, another Brady breathe and he promised to visit that after noon. My arms and home, and I wasn't able to run back into them. For a day, I sat in contempt, my name shifted through houses until a girls orphanage to stamp their brand on me, and my lungs screamed for Brady or Esrooke, they screamed to the birds, but nobody heard. And Dear Brady, I was so scared, my fingers cold with lungs of feathers, I was truly alone and the steel of my heart melted. Esrooke promised to sing to the birds with me, and all I could do was scream. 

Most of the others don't write, either, if they had somebody they wouldn't be in a house for the lost. And I don't believe I'm lost, these windows are clear. I see the birds and Esrooke, and the seconds - only six more months.

Dear Brady.

I truly miss you. 

There is nothing to say.