Galaxies Apart [Taurus and Neptune's DP/Funeral]

Neptune Liefde.


When will I feel this
As vivid as it truly is
Fall in love in a single touch
And fall apart when it hurts too much


Back in grade school- back when the only thing I had to worry about was the scrapes on my knees and the big, bad wolf coming to blow my house down- they taught me about the structure of a story. I remember that day vividly, the moment that she looked into our eyes with a smile far bigger than the sun pressing deep into my skull, because in her hands, she held the leather-bound booklet- these pages were a sea of words to six-year-old me, but I was fixing to turn seven- one of the oldest in my class- and I had to prove that there was simply no drowning for Neptune Liefde when he knew how to keep his head above the water.


(“Go ahead, Neptune, and remember not to be shy when you get to the big words!” Ms. Atlas’ voice was sweet, like the lemonade my mom used to make, and whenever she handed the book to me, gentleness lacing her touch like a spiderweb’s grasp, it was like I had been trusted with something far more important than the impromptu passages that were sealed between these covers. None-the-less, I cleared my voice and began to let both my lips and eyes scan over the syllables.


“Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in a vil.. village near the forest. Whenever she went out, the little girl wore a red riding cloak, so everyone in the.. village called her Little Red Riding Hood.” As I read along, my voice didn’t falter but once, and as I found myself nearing the end of the paragraph, there was a hint of a smile that began to play catch in the flesh of my cheeks. I continued to read, and the more I read, the more I started to pick up on the little struggles that came with book such as this one. It was harsh, how in a moment everything could go from being so terribly blissful to dark, and frightening, and a thing of nightmares, rather than life. So I read the next line with hesitation, so I read the next line with what she told me not to do.


“The.. the b-better to.. eat.. you with, my dear," roar-roared the w-olf and he lea..leapt out of the b-bed and began to ch..ase the.. little girl.”
 With a sympathetic smile, Ms. Atlas held her hand up and didn’t spare a moment in making eye contact. “Good job, sweetie.” Her kindness was forced, and it felt.. emptying that even I, as a small child, could tell that. I was nothing special, because not even in my highest moments, could I do something right.


“Who wants to read next?”)


It’s been roughly eleven years since that day, and occasionally, I feel the same way that I did then- that my climax has been reached and nothing pertaining to me will be nearly as colourful as it was on that green-grey striped rug. In my last year of school, though, shortly after I had been given the notice by my father that I had learned enough and it was time to get a job to help out our family, I had a teacher that took a different approach to this concept, seeing life as many climaxes, rather than just one.


It was during a lecture, that he explained what was meant by this; that in a single person’s many years on this planet, they will experience tension building up to certain moments, a time where it seems that they’re at their peak, and a fall that makes everything blend into blacks and greys and blues. But that this was not the end. Eventually, they will get back up, and go out, and start the cycle over and over again, until the last plateau has been reached and ultimately- finally- they will have exhausted their story into the finest grains of a resolution that is to be had my humanity in itself. He described this process in such colour, that every word stuck with me in one way or another; it was how I kept my head up, long after my life had become a steady series of those blacks and greys and blues that he had mentioned in his talk. I was so much more than my first grade self, and I found reassurance in the fact that though it may had been a little, I had grown in my knowledge despite the odds. It was as If hope was hiding in the corners of every action I acted out.


This fulfillment, as I realise now, was given in the syllables of my name being called out in front of the entire district two weeks ago. What everyone saw as my downfall, happened to be my true exposition, and the further and further I ran along in this journey, the more it began to be apparent that this was the final stretch for Neptune Liefde and his hoarde of ‘fairytale endings’ that were never to be. It would seem as if on this beach, my climax had been met; not to my knowledge, of course, but to the viewers at home. It could have been just another lead-up building tension to the finale, it could have been just another part to a larger and better whole. But it was not, because I was not.


And now I’m bleeding out.


Somewhere off to the left, I hear him asking where I am. It starts out softly, at first, with just the sound of a thought bubbling in his head, but then the sound genuinely reaches my ears, and certainly not for the first time, but possibly the last, I want to scream out that I’m here, and I’m here, and I’m here.


“Nep. Nep. Ne..tune. Where- is- he?”


I’m right here, Taurus. Just look over, please, I’m right here- don’t let me die alone. Please.


Another one of us joins- no- two? of us join, and a part of me wants to grab the halberd that I no longer have and get ready to stand my ground. But she is on his back- She is on Septys’ back- and I’m tired.


Oh, God, I’m tired.


Everything is blurry for a moment- even Ruth’s touch on my hand- when I try to focus in on her face. There’s twelve girls in this arena- even less now, as the days have passed- and it’s a struggle, even to try and pick out who exactly this is in the mess of me dying. But I know her, when she begins to talk, and even though she is someone who I’ve ‘spoken’ to only once before, I relax, if only a little, when the words flow out; the movement of my fist on my chest lessens a bit as I listen.


“Neptune,” Her voice is tender, but even the gentleness of my name does nothing to chill this heat that covers the entirety of my body.


“Neptune, I hear you.”


“Please- let me help you.”


“Say what you need to say.”


“My voice is all yours.”


But it isn’t, because I don’t have a voice- I’m not allowed to- and I’ve never had one, even when I could express these words that I so desperately wish to get off of my tongue. After all, in the end, we’re all corpses, whether we’ve let the capitol take monopoly on us or not, and property does not equal individuality, no matter how hard we try to make it be so. This is the price we pay for half-moon smiles and premature deathbeds, the whiteness of whittled moon succumbing to the yellow of day over and over and over and over and-


over.


I push the thoughts away though, because my last moments aren't going to be spent looming over the wall of 'what-ifs' that stand between me and my happiness; I'm going to be with my mother, and God, that's all I can ask for, 


The hints of a smile break loose over the hills of my cheeks.


"Tell them to kick some ass for me."


Can we skip past near-death clichés
Where my heart restarts, as my life replays?
All I want is to flip a switch
Before something breaks that cannot be fixed.