introspective [helter skelter; day four]

Day four untitled— there were no words needed to define the defied.

My brother had spent his fourth day in rest, well-deserved but not well-earned by a boy who had not let blood of another run freely over his palms at the time of his standing. Day three passing and accounting for I already had the life of Hannah O’Leary caught between my teeth; a bitter taste in the back of my throat that will not wash clean, even as I down the contents of a jug and savor the taste across a dry tongue.

Clarified and left to dry, my skin is willing to give way at the mention of a wealth that can only be acquired by a mind given way to a loss of morality.

Power bought and power sought— I cannot erase the image of the boy from six with collar wrapped tightly around his neck, animalistic and restrained by the girl from two and a god complex that stretched far further than my own. There is power in the premise of prevailing promises, but the girl from two attempted to hand him nothing but a sense of servitude, and his willingness to fulfill a task he was not built for left bile rising in my throat.

His were the types of graves my brother would toss a side eye to and I would spit on.

But my brother was a cloudy sky and I am a hurricane, violent and spinning until orientation is simply a lost art.

The loss of not only battle but war as well had left both of us with causalities, my brother holding the pieces of his torn skin together like they could still be stitched by needle and thread. I of my own accord was holding a bleeding heart still within my chest, one hand free only to press it to my brother’s wrist— a loss of pulse was just the result of a death long awaited. He had been buried with his bruises, black and blue for burden’s sake when Duncan Bowers-Fox had looked over the edge of his casket one time only.

A world of black and white was suddenly saturated with color, from the tones on my brother’s coffin-confined skin to the tones of green that highlighted Duncan’s skin at the sight of it. I saw red pooling beneath the boundaries of my skin, but that of another shade, never blood boiled over to be released by blade, but that of an angry that could not find the force to erupt.

With red marks of both kind upon my skin now, I desperately wanted to search for something of a different shade.

When the night of day three comes to make its presence known, with blaring rhythm and sullen tone, I do not find that which I am looking for. Instead, I am given the faces of the boy from three and Leticia Tibideaux, no spear in her eye but no clarity seen either. But before details can be micromanaged and memorized she is fading as quickly as she had passed earlier in the day.

Dustyn says nothing on the topic, and so I leave the promise of conversation lingering in the air as if it goes without being said.

But uneasiness settles in my stomach as the sky fades to that of black, and with sight disappearing quicker than Leticia Tibideaux, there is no ideal of resolution that crosses my mind. The resulting night is one of sleep that is lighter than the sun that rises with the same lack of morning as its counterpart’s setting.

When the sun sheds light upon the morning ground, the promise of conversation is still swaying in the morning breeze as though it had not been touched throughout the duration of the night, but neither Dustyn or I reach for it, and instead decide to leave it behind all together as we set off in silence away from the cliffs that had so calmly watched the blood of Leticia Tibideaux drain over its cracks and crevices.

Pacing out I look over my shoulder for promises lost and promises broken, but all I find in its place are footsteps that cannot be replicated, and the desire to strike forward overrides any want to reminisce. Progress found in this premise I hold my line of sight straight until a sound of shock comes from the boy to my left. A spin of the heel and a drop of mind leaves me fumbling for thought in the wake of self-destruction, and as I place a palm firmly around the handle of an axe spent three days in tragedy, I pivot for solid footing.

I find only mistakes and micommunications in place of my own coordination, false alarms and adrenaline mispalced in my veins attempting to fall from boiling to simmering. A shaking palm relaxing around the handle of an axe and I'm turning to Dustyn, "Nail me in the nuts next time I almost take your head off instead of actually being helpful."