the girl who never was {melantha}

She once invaded my empty dreams with her face and soft melody of giggles, clear chimes of silver bells. The flames of the sunset poured out of her scalp in tight ringlets and sprayed across her fair skin and rose colored cheeks. She was a summer breeze, gentle and full of warmth, gracing beneath the light of the sun and touching all that stands still, urging softly, Come play!

But her eyes took a sledgehammer to the fragile barrier between sleep and consciousness, never failing to shove me over the brink and leave me jolting awake with resentment sour in my eyes. I remember them with precision - how could I ever forget those eyes? They were great orbs of vibrant ballad blue; they were the clear sky on a torrid day. They were ghosts of her father and in their depths danced with promises never to be kept.

She was a phantom who would forever haunt me with every breath she drew; I loved her despite it.

The world rested at her tiny fingertips - she could have had anything she desired and it would have fallen right into her palms. Despite her toxic roots and the blood of her father that coursed through her veins and resounded in each soft heartbeat, she had already uprooted herself into my heart. Her gentle kicks against my stomach were swords slashing into the shield that cloaks my heart protectively. She herself was the chink in my armor and I found myself exposed before this unborn child - but I did not mind.

Beneath the gravestone before me, lies the girl who never was. Her half-developed infant body rests in the bed a tiny casket, surrounded by oceans of tears and melodies of screams and cursed memories. Her delicate skin never saw a glimpse of the sun. Not one single jovial beam or ray of comforting warmth. She never set foot on the ground, never felt the softness of the meadows or the harsh coldness of stone. Never would her eyes open to look on the beauties that glimmer before her - the blanket of stars igniting the dark evening sky, the dazzling sparkle of the sunlight against the gentle waves of crystal waters. She is free from the chains that bind me here and departed Earth unscathed - she never emerged into the world that would slice her delicate skin with its malice.

The pressure of the anguish building up in my chest releases at last in a tsunami, one single wave that destroys everything in its path with one swift movement. My sobs are crackles of lightning against the omens of thunder, warnings that I will not escape from the encroaching storm that gathers within me. Its roots are planted in my heart and nurtured there by the pain, but its seed is from the girl who never was, encased deep in the ground she never walked upon.

Everything unravels. Everything I have kept locked inside bursts from its prison, unlocked by the memory, more prominent on this day, the anniversary, of the indigo sky and the verdant grass that sprouts on this ground, beneath which she ended. Her warmth faded and I no longer felt the glow of life harbored within me. It was as if there was a sphere of ice in place of her in my womb.

And I break, all over again. My composure shatters and tumbles out of my firm grasp, leaving me gasping in turmoil. Streams leak from my eyes that glare angrily in despair at the words carved into the gravestone, SOLEIL BLACK. And the lightning CRACK CRACK CRACKS with the downpour of rain, nearly choking me and clogging my lungs. I am utterly at the mercy of the agony that tears its monstrous claws at my heart. Snip snip snip and it has sliced through my heartstrings, freeing the pain locked away for a year.

I never knew for certain that "she" was indeed female.

I never knew if my dreams deceived me, if she indeed was the sunset and the soft ring of bells, if her eyes were blue ghosts reflecting my misery. There is only one thing that rests certain - bitterly, agonizingly - in my mind: she is gone. Her soul, if there was one bound to an unborn child, tumbled into Death's saving arms the moment her heart ceased to drum. With the unforgiving blade of his scythe he severed the loose ties she had to Earth and carried her away into the dark, and to wherever is at the end of the void - or perhaps the end is truly oblivion.

The girl who never was is the ultimate broken promise. But this one was not Thaddeus's to break. The moment she surfaced in me, a promise of new life was bonded between myself and fate - if that is a force in dreary existence. And fate decided I was not allowed to be granted joy, and even when I laid with my glass bones shattered on the floor in Thaddeus's wake. I had to be broken once more, until I was crushed beyond repair, until I was hindered wounded everlastingly.

Fate is cruel and I die a little bit everyday at its hand. I can feel my heart slowly crumbling until all that is left is a shell and a shield. I am holding onto the ledge of hope for dear life, but my fingers slip and give way, one by one.

And when it's all over, I will plunge to my untimely doom. My legs will shatter upon impact on the stone that awaits me, calls me.

I shall never rise again.