The Cornucopia Strikes Back [Day 3]

Pages one through eleven of five steps to fixing your child’s depression never once covered the topic of my two acquaintances lying dead on the ground beside me. Textbook definition of what the end of all times was like I fell to my knees in the wake of death’s own detonation—this swan song does not scream of harmony. My own fuse smothered into cacophony the ground seems to shake beneath me—I’ll be damned for never having the bravery to be obliterated into nothing. Strike the match against my skin Sue seems to be set ablaze, embers burning on his skin like the base of coal black—I do not pity the kindling.

Eighty-seven and my axe skims past the girl from eight, leaving only a mark of ash upon her skin as any indication of contact. Her back turns and I bite my tongue, (“Youshouldhaveishouldhaveyoushouldhave I should have done something.”)

Cannons sounding like the swan song to death’s own coronation I watch her flee to the tune of their burial tune—there’s a reason I’ve always preferred the silence.

Interrupted by the simplistic speech of the boys from four and seven I do not intervene between their hope for freedom and their longing to do it painlessly, only watching behind dulling eyes as they collect their things in caution, keeping eyes trained upon Sue and I in fear that we would cut the wires of sanity in recollection for what we’d lost, but neither of us moves from the spot, cemented by blood to the foundation of a temple dedicated to that which we could no longer have— if only funeral hymnals were prayers a god we did not believe in would accept.

Their fleeting footsteps the basis to a chorus that had been sung one time too many I wait until the rhythm has fallen to that which I can follow before ripping my feet from the foundation, careful steps towards the dead body of the monster marred by fear flowing through my veins. It was still coated in the ashes that had erupted from the tip of my axe—immolated through inspiration only to be smothered by a reality I could not bring myself to face.

Noah Bowers and Maya Xiaoqing lay face down in the dirt, the smoke screen clearing to bring their blood into view.

Painted in their shade of red I could see scratches in the ground beneath their fingers, blood caught underneath the nails like a final masterpiece on marred canvas. They did not bomb themselves to fix the bullet holes yet the gaping wounds left nothing to the imagination—they were braver than I’d ever be. When Sue Tate hauls Noah Bowers’s body across his shoulders, I know he is as well.

(“Can you do anything right, Wyatt?”)

To admit that I cannot would not be weakness.

Eighty-eight, I am worthless, caught in the chasm between terrified and incapable, neither helpful and neither truly hindering— I’d scratch it upon the wall if they hadn’t been replaced by the images of our nightmares.

Tip of the axe dragging in the dirt I run the back of a bloody hand across my forehead, marred already the canvas of my skin can no longer be desecrated without my permission—do not fix me; I am not broken.

Yet.

I have been torn since the age of thirteen, when my father pressed a pocketknife to my palm with the hopes of fixing a son who was not himself. But to break meant the snap of sanity completely, and while Sue Tate held the body of Noah Bowers across already burdened shoulders, I turned a shoulder to his sorrow and stepped over the body of Maya Xiaoqing.