come and join the party, leave anxieties behind [mylee/rook]

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rook
Veteran Member

2,361 POSTS

Pronouns: he/him
last seen Sept 26, 2023 15:42:53 GMT -5

who needs another thing to be sad about?

come and join the party, leave anxieties behind [mylee/rook] Nov 22, 2015 18:49:54 GMT -5

Post by rook on Nov 22, 2015 18:49:54 GMT -5

we're just a group of your white blood cells fighting off parasites
we're your system mechanics trying to fix this machine
what's the one thing that has more speed, more strength,
and goes deeper than us?
a nuclear submarine

Drenched. The stars have wept and soaked me in phosphorescence. Like algae I radiate, a pulsating mess of decrepit radiation. Putrid my face, red and bulbous, angry but at the same time so empty. I wretch and heave but nothing shifts in my stomach. I exist merely as this vanquished demon, dissolving into a puddle or ash, or maybe both. A stake is driven into my heart, and each heartbeat is a beat down on that stake. Driving into the very core of me, splitting me into two, into three, into a million pieces. Shattered is the girl I once was.

But I've always been shattered.

Petal. An awful name for an awful girl. She ran away so far from home that she didn't know who she was any more. Her soul was ripped from her, and a new one was duct taped in place. Your name is Quentin, Quinten, Quinn. Is it? Is that who I am? Have I been this false girl for so long that I have no choice any more. I am Quetin Peters. This false identity was given to me, but it's who I am now. Petal Quill is dead, along with Draco and Margaret. All that's left is this girl who waltzes up to the bar and orders ten tequila shots and then shoots a gun at the tacky chandelier. The girl who brings home boys and brings home girls and gets fucked, and fucks, and fucking just fuck it all for fuck's sake.

I am so, so alone.

So I shiver on the floor, in the kitchen, in my house, alone. There is no one. This tiled floor may as well be the great abyss in all it's expanse, with no walls and no ceiling, just the floor. Cold. Hard. Real. Not real. I pull the hood of my hoodie over my head, hiding my hatred and hideous features. No one is here to judge me except for myself, but I do it anyway because in life, the harshest judge on us is ourselves. It's dark. So dark. The lights are off because no one is home.

No one is home.

He was the best of us, even if I didn't want to admit it at the time. Strong, resolute, silent. He didn't understand things in the same way we did, but that didn't make him any less of a person. He was misunderstood, but not to me. I understood him.
"I FUCKING UNDERSTOOD HIM!"

My throat is raw, my eyes are dry and wet at the same time, stinging in denial. He can't be dead, but he is. Stone cold reality. Draco is gone, just like Margaret is gone, and just like we'll all just go in the end. We're all insignificant until the moment that we're significant to someone. Bleed me out, I'm the same as everyone else, you'll see. You'll all see when I'm gone that I was right. We're all vessels. That's it. Worthless fucking sacks of shit.

I'm so tired.

Margaret. Where are you? Why did you leave? Those nights we spent just talking about life. I told you that bodies were just capsules that contained the real us. You agreed with me. We smoked some herb and stumbled out onto that hill that overlooked Seven. Man, the tree canopies danced in the wind like something else. I was going to tell you how I felt but how could I stain what we had. How could I risk it. What if you had said no. She would have said no. I'm not good enough for her, and she didn't like girls. She wasn't into girls. I was just her friend, just her shitty best friend, that was all. Shitty fucking...

"I love you." I press my face against the kitchen floor, "I'm sorry."

I wasn't there. I didn't volunteer. I wasn't there. I'm still not there. Where am I? Wasn't there for Margaret, wasn't there for Draco, wasn't even there for my friends when they died. Selfish shitty fucking junkie. Get off the chems, they're fucking you up. But I need them. I need them.

Margaret said I didn't need them. She said I could be so much more without the ketamine and the ecstasy and the herbs and the tobacco but life is so bleak and harsh that we need that buzz to fuel us. This world is so black and cold. I went to smoke that crystal, and she grabbed my hand, pulled it away. My heart raced more at that contact than any hit of any drug. How could I have told her that? How could I have put that emotional blackmail on her? Be my drug and I won't need to get wasted. That would have been selfish. I couldn't do that, not to her.

I sit up and reach for a needle on the table. I can't take this any more. I need to just float away. Away from the pain and towards some fake hallucination of the girl I loved. Please, just let me see her again.

knocked off my feet by the backdraft brought back to earth
oxygen clears my head and I just gotta say
oh you're not gonna believe this
you can't perceive this
this is like nothing you've seen before
but lucky for you
yea lucky for you
this is an open door

word count: 836, graphics: rook
theme: ssssssnakepit by enter shikari

an hourglass is just a glass with sand inside

Deleted

0 POSTS
last seen Apr 18, 2024 16:25:26 GMT -5

come and join the party, leave anxieties behind [mylee/rook] Nov 25, 2015 21:12:30 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on Nov 25, 2015 21:12:30 GMT -5

[presto]

[/presto]

alana

When my father drank, he devolved into a slur of curses against the children he brought into this world and the woman who bore them. A family line disfigured by a woman’s name and nothing more, my father had hidden his hatred in the bottles broken against family pictures and lines of ancestry ripped apart at the seams. My heritage is one of hatred, pressed to my skin like it is destined to flow through my veins.

I will not practice bloody hands and glass sanity.

Leading by example and setting the stage for second-hand suicide, my mother cleaned up the destruction he left behind and acted as if stray shard of glass did not sink into her skin. Her blood was not invisible, no longer simply a thing of figurative speech and rather that which marked my skin when she would lay a palm to my cheek— “I’m sorry, Alana.”

Sorry did many things but it did not take her finger off the trigger of a gun loaded with one bullet too many.

A hand pressed to my sister’s eyes to shield her from her horrors I could not describe, sorry lingered on my lips like an afterthought. The ringing of a gun in my ears only cacophony, I spewed curses at my father like I was the melody of a song he knew far too well— “Fucking animal, you should’ve been the dead one.”

The cry of my sister a harmony I did not wish to hate, I pressed my palms to her ears as another bottle smashed against the wall to my right. “Just like your mother, Alana— you’ll end up like her too.”

Clenched fists and tight chest, I’d locked my sister and I in our room until the eye of the storm had passed over our shelter. But the human heart is indecent, and the fallible will fracture once the hour of its calling has passed. Survival and secession are interlaced through gritted teeth and a shaking pen, and with one hand pressed to paper and the other to a quivering heart I apologized for the first time in an existence short enough to fit on a timeline I could measure in the space my body would allow, “I’m sorry; you will be safer without the danger I bring along.”

A hurricane surges and brings with it the promise of rain, but when I felt anger rising in my chest, I could find only disdain.

I wonder what promise could be found in the latter.

A bed turned over to a heart wandering in the wake of her own destruction, Quentin Peters had opened the door to a home characterized by a stranger in its halls and lost memories in the walls. But a change of pace was welcome; I would rather clean up the mess of someone else rather than wallow in sorrows of my own. She was an honest drinker, both in amount and metaphor, and though I turned down bottles of the same I would never hesitate to sit alongside her while she spewed her contempt into the air that surrounded us.

She never apologized— I suppose that was part of the appeal.

And on the few and far between nights when the same bottle managed to offer temptation at its rim I’d ask her what she recommended to drink and she’d tell me nothing, but what she did not understand was that my reputation did not precede me— there is no innocence behind eyes that see a world of black and white.

When I cross through the same door held open still in the same inviting as the first night spent in the same, I hear her voice from across the hall, “I fucking understood him.”

My dear girl, we truly understand no one.

Sobs muffled by a scratched voice I begin to run, the fear of seeing her blood plastered against the kitchen floor too raw of a scratch in my skin to sew back up with passive thought. I find her sitting shakily against the leg of the table, reaching for release in a place only characterized by pain and another night destined to be spent in the same way.

Crouching beside her I catch her wrist in my palm, her name caught in the passing seconds it takes me to formulate an idea of where she has gone and where she was headed since I had left the steps of this home. When I meet her gaze, it is distant, the soul of a girl long gone and leaving behind only this hollow body.

A goner of a girl; I knew the role to be played in the same way as I lower her hand to rest in her lap. But my hold does not release— I know the only way to take one’s finger off the gun is to unload the bullets yourself.

And so I do, one after the other as I slowly and methodically wrap myself around her to close the space for failure. “You won’t fix it like this, Quill.”

I do not mention that fixing it requires more than I can offer in arms pressed around her waist and a promise pressed to her neck.

Last Edit: Dec 10, 2015 21:21:10 GMT -5 by Deleted

rook
Veteran Member

2,361 POSTS

Pronouns: he/him
last seen Sept 26, 2023 15:42:53 GMT -5

who needs another thing to be sad about?

come and join the party, leave anxieties behind [mylee/rook] Nov 27, 2015 19:02:28 GMT -5

Post by rook on Nov 27, 2015 19:02:28 GMT -5

we're just a group of your white blood cells fighting off parasites
we're your system mechanics trying to fix this machine
what's the one thing that has more speed, more strength,
and goes deeper than us?
a nuclear submarine

The needle is thin, it's point is infinitesimal, but when I inject it, I'll feel like I'm riding down the edge of it onto a rail road through space. I'll see Mara again, and for some sweet seconds I'll be able to tell her all the things I was too scared to say before. I'll pretend that it matters, trick my mind into thinking that I have closure on something that surely will never be closed. I'll be comforted. It's a cruel, false comfort, but it's better than decaying on the floor, wanting to be chewed up and swallowed down in the mouth of the anglerfish known as regret. I'll follow the false light, because false is false, but it's better than absolute nothing.

I reach out my arm - it feels so heavy. The needle sits dormant on the stained coffee table next to me, washed in the dim light of this sorry room. It's metal casing glimmers with temptation, it's contents is Morphine space juice. Rocket fuel into my system. Escape.

Fingers gently curl around my wrist and direct my hand away from the needle and towards me lap. My heart shifts into fifth gear and sends my blood racing and jolting around every corner of my vascular structure. I inhale sharply, eyes searching for whoever is holding my arm and taking me away from my release. Mara? Is that Mara? No, it's not Mara. It's nearly her, but it's not, it's Alana.

"You won’t fix it like this, Quill." Comes her soft voice. Comforting. My pulse slows and my eyes look away. Familiar voice, but not quite familiar. Not quite the. Not. I don't know how to say how I've heard that voice, that tone, that Quill is comforting to me. Her arms wrap around me and bring me closer to her, my chest presses against her chest, and I feel her breathing against me, and I breathe against her. I am hollow, but as I feel Alana's life-force against mine, I see how full and alive she is. How can she be so alive? The shit we've all been through, and she's seen it all like we have, but she carries on and I want to know how?

"Lana." My voice breaks, my arms wrapping around her neck and my face pressing into her shoulder.

Alana, the girl who stood by as the world burned, but it wasn't her world, it was ours. She didn't know Margaret. I put the room up for rent about six months after she died, and Lana moved in soon after. I don't speak to her about Mara, and I don't think the others do too - they're not overly fond of her. ~~Her face is too similar~~. Then Draco died, and now our sorry little group's existence is going into extinction, one burning corpse at a time. She was here for that, yes. She's here now, too.

But does she understand? Does she understand this pain? Who has she ever lost? She hasn't. Not like this, surely not. I'd know, because she'd be broken like me, and like Ratts, and like Garrett. When I look into Lana's eyes I see the stars, but in the mirror I see cataclysms. If she had felt what I had felt over the past two years - losing the girl I loved the most and the friend I trusted the most, then her soul wouldn't be a soul, it'd be combustion.

And I'm jealous. Jealous that she's so whole and together, and here's me, a moonage disaster with rivers running down my face and salt in my mouth. So broken that my skin stings, so empty that I can't even vomit any more. So very human.

Human.

It's human to be broken. It's human to feel the things I'm feeling, right? It doesn't make me any less of a person to be so much less of a person. I am bleeding and raw and open like a would carved out of a nut, but I am alive. I have that, even if I feel six feet under with a hatchet in my head from hangovers and being hung drawn and quartered by chaotic blends of berry blast cocktails. I have that. Please let me have that solace. I need to know I am not a sack of bones and lost memories.

"You can't fix a black hole." Because is the decision really any more than half mine when it wasn't my decision to have half of my existence ripped from me and stabbed to death on television.

knocked off my feet by the backdraft brought back to earth
oxygen clears my head and I just gotta say
oh you're not gonna believe this
you can't perceive this
this is like nothing you've seen before
but lucky for you
yea lucky for you
this is an open door

word count: 756, graphics: rook
theme: ssssssnakepit by enter shikari

Last Edit: Nov 27, 2015 19:06:24 GMT -5 by rook

an hourglass is just a glass with sand inside

Deleted

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last seen Apr 18, 2024 16:25:26 GMT -5

come and join the party, leave anxieties behind [mylee/rook] Dec 10, 2015 23:24:52 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2015 23:24:52 GMT -5

[presto]

[/presto]

alana

Her skin is burning— caught on fire like the smoldering embers of a flame in its last seconds of existence.

The death of a supernova is brilliant, after all.

Explosive and exacerbated my name falls, “Lana.” I cringe, closing my movements to defer detection as she presses herself closer to my own body. Quivering in place of false courage I do not flinch when her arms lock around my neck— the key can’t be found in this trembling heart. But the lock is picked apart by each fluctuation of her pulse, my fingers still wrapped around her wrist because I am still terrified of losing it. Tied string around my finger; a reminder of things to be and things to lose— I cannot let her slip like a forgotten task, like a job unfinished because it simply did not hold priority in a mind that will not speak silence like primary discourse.

Her words knives drawn at my throat, “You can’t fix a black hole.” But I’ve seen galaxies and worlds beyond, nebulas and constellations drawn upon my skin when there is nothing else to be seen but space. A void unable to be filled— I know how it feels to cut veins and see nothing in return. I have bled for the stars and only burnt out in payment. To flare and feel fire are one in the same and I can never remember if I am the match or the kindling.

So I strike another.

And when I burn I remember why the feeling is so goddamn welcome. The expenditure of energy is simply another method to feel exposed and this in itself is something of an addiction because I am reminded that stoicism— that this internal hatred of anything less than perfection can fade for a moment or longer because I am allowed to bleed. I am allowed to tear apart skin and bone to find the human underneath and see life lines pulsing in place of my veins.

I peel apart my ribs to see my lungs expand in order to remind myself another breath taken is another battle won.

I suppose that Quill is simply losing the war.

Strategies defined and turned to stone I let silence take over command of my forces as I place bullets in the chamber of the same gun I unloaded through her body pressed to my own— burning, I am afraid of the flames when they threaten paper-thin confidence. Ripped from the edges I cannot find the last page; the last chapter left to be written by the shaking hand that cannot predict what lies in the ruins of a future far brighter than she is.

Supernova of a girl burning to save others from the fire.

Extinguished by exhaustion I take over place as the fire starter, running a thumb along her jawline like I could leave newborn stars in place of nail marks. Her skin soft, burned, map of a wonderland wasted by bad habits and addiction as the starring attractions. I am the only one left wandering empty ground, analyzing the footprints others have left behind and deciding what can be salvaged from the ruins.

She has been building her body on a foundation of broken bones and glass already split into shards, cutting herself on what was left behind by the girl who slept in my bed before I had the privilege of claiming the same space. I suppose that’s why my bed had never felt empty— had never really given way to the definition of my own because there was someone still tied to the sheets in her mind.

I want to ask her to fill the empty space; to spend the night wrapped around the galaxies I cannot see in full color due to the secondary nature of polarized thinking. But asking her to uncover the casket of a past lover undefined crosses a line I cannot lay down for my own, so instead I do not move; do not flinch when she holds tight to my body because I imagine there is no other solution to the equation she has drawn upon my skin with shaking breath and white knuckles.

I do not move; do not flinch when I imagine home among cold kitchen tiles, lost in translation to a language long defined by stories to which I do not know the ending. Broken girl of glass held by porcelain hands— I do not hold carefully anymore, the fear of blood drawn has been surpassed by the fear of losing the definition of home that has been so hard to define in the rawest terms.

I define home now as I lay my head atop her own, body quivering in desperation to fill the void left by galaxies unseen, “Because of you, I’m no longer looking for an escape route.”

Her skin is burning; I do not wish to sweep up the ashes of her sanity.

Last Edit: Dec 11, 2015 15:37:59 GMT -5 by Deleted

rook
Veteran Member

2,361 POSTS

Pronouns: he/him
last seen Sept 26, 2023 15:42:53 GMT -5

who needs another thing to be sad about?

come and join the party, leave anxieties behind [mylee/rook] Dec 17, 2015 18:23:19 GMT -5

Post by rook on Dec 17, 2015 18:23:19 GMT -5

we're just a group of your white blood cells fighting off parasites
we're your system mechanics trying to fix this machine
what's the one thing that has more speed, more strength,
and goes deeper than us?
a nuclear submarine

Space dementia, blackening out my memories like an aggressive virus, wiping away the bad things that happened, and the good. It's a conscious decision to force out those memories, as they're all too painful to live with. They're like blips on a radar, occasionally cropping up and pinching my mind. Nights like this are the nights I remember everything, and it's a flash flood of regressive thoughts.

I can't stop them now, I'm drenched in the wake of the past. My mind is numb, struck with a cerebral hypothermia, yet I can still feel it bleeding. I think they call this grief, but I'm beyond grieving. I haven't lost someone else, I've lost a part of myself. I'm split into five, and every guardian that falls leaves my soul more and more vulnerable. Exposed. Alone.

Isolation is a cold fate. It's a tundra where your thoughts get caught up in a whirlwind, lashing at your conscience again and again. You should never be left alone with your thoughts, because thoughts are cruel. Thoughts don't know boundaries. They creep into your head and lay consequences and hypotheses. Should be's, could be's, never were's.

I've been alone for too long. Running away, hiding, shying away from responsibility and society. Stealing, scamming, scrounging. Losing money, losing friends, losing friends. Losing my mind. Using, abusing, inhaling, snorting, injecting. Disregarding. Forgetting. Sleeping, resting, waking, using, partying, crashing. Remembering. Crying.

And after all the things I've done and said. All the people I've spat on, all the people I've lost to other wars and all the false gods I've blasphemed in their names. After the dark empty nights of staring at the ceiling. After all the bad things and the sometimes good things I've done, I find myself at the edge. The end. The void.

And it's time to do or die.

I don't want to live my life like this. I'm so much more than a constellation or a forgotten legend. My eyes flicker orange amber brown, like a dying star caught in a flare. Cool hands press gently against my skin, and my heart skips again. I inhale a sharp breath, and then my eyes lock with hers, and I calm down.

Her eyes are so similar. They're a completely different color and shape, but they're the same eyes. The same expression. Lana's giving me the look that Mara used to give me. The one that said 'Yes, you're standing on the edge of infinity, but I'm here with you'.

And I regress as I see her lips part and her velvet voice tell me:
"Because of you, I'm no longer looking for an escape root."

And it baffles me that I could be that to someone. I'm a dying moon in orbit of a dead planet, and yet she sees life on me. My eyes move upwards again, to hers. What does she see in me? A friend? I've never been there for her. The only thing I've done for her is offer her a room.

The hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and I have a giddy feeling just above my abdomen. I'm nervous, and I'm never nervous. Everything points to this being wrong, but that's what makes me shuffle forwards on my knees and wrap my hands around her neck. I close my eyes and press my lips to hers.

knocked off my feet by the backdraft brought back to earth
oxygen clears my head and I just gotta say
oh you're not gonna believe this
you can't perceive this
this is like nothing you've seen before
but lucky for you
yea lucky for you
this is an open door

word count: 555, graphics: rook
theme: ssssssnakepit by enter shikari

an hourglass is just a glass with sand inside

Deleted

0 POSTS
last seen Apr 18, 2024 16:25:26 GMT -5

come and join the party, leave anxieties behind [mylee/rook] Dec 20, 2015 21:23:18 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on Dec 20, 2015 21:23:18 GMT -5

[presto]

[/presto]

alana

I’ve built this temple from hollow bones.

I worship here— cling to holy ground as if it is about to give way because there is nothing solid about faith. I cannot touch my fear of the unknown, only worship it as if it sits in the palms of my hands like yesterday’s offering.

The alter is empty, now.

But still I worship, place my palms together and fall to bruised knees. This prayer lingers on my tongue like a lost memory, a creed that has been recited one time too many— I fall silent when she quivers. I cannot pray for a heart holier than my own, for I am the sinner here, born to a bloodline drenched in impurities, white washed red and saturated with the cries of the desolate.

Damned and the dying, martyrs for a cause that is no longer valid.

I watched broken glass litter the floor like commandments; I stepped carefully to avoid the repercussions of his story of salvation— he said I would never be saved with such a thoughtful mind, that the worshippers of religions only believed not seen had to be blind enough to believe that what they could not see could still be known.

He said my mother was a strong woman of faith.

I wonder why she did not love her religion enough to believe in a future brighter than her own blood, why the best ending she could bring herself to put faith in was only her own hand behind the trigger.

I suppose that is why I have never felt anything but empty when I pray.

My pleas are as hollow as the bones with which I have built my temple.

But Quill is stone steps to the alter, sturdy. She is the solid foundation with the bell tower ringing at the sound of every hour. She crumbles under the testament of time but still she stands, this ground beneath her feet is hers alone because she has not given it the option to be anything else. She writes commandments with an iron tongue; these walls bleed for her when she cries out in pain— my heart bleeds at the thought of her cry, (“I fucking understood him.”)

My body aches at the sound of my name on her tongue. It sounds holy whens she speaks it, for there is weight in the way it falls from her lips and crumbles at my feet because my fingertips cannot ghost over the letters in the same manner. When I speak her name I choke; it catches in my throat because my tongue does not understand how it feels to not be accused of blasphemy in every syllable.

I want to believe in some kind of god when she touches me.

There is no simplicity of humanity in the way her fingertips set my skin alight; burning, she is the death and birth of the same supernova, and for once, I would like to see the stars. This dark sky has been empty far too long— the promised sunrise is still to come. When I see the morning, I see her. Empty beds and those hollow walls have not sustained this dying religion. I suppose that this is why this home has always seemed alive. The worshippers here understand eternity; she is the time I do not wish to pass with ease.

In this home, I want to pray.

But this temple has been empty far too long. The alter has weathered with time lost and time wasted— I am desperate now, longing to find faith in her uncharted spine. She shuffles forward, closes the space between us and for once my faith is entertained. The unknown remains so, but I can find enough of a foundation in her touch to place my palms upon her hips when her own find their way to my neck. She is the time passed but not lost, leaving herself on my alter like this sacrifice is worth more than its weight in gold— I am worthless when my body quivers at her touch.

She is the religion I can offer myself to.

And goddamn, what isn’t there to love about a god that places his faith in that which lies in the body. This flesh, these bones— they have longed for a thought process that follows the space between empty touches and heavy words.

When she kisses me, I pray, and for once I do not feel hollow.

Her name does not catch on my throat when I pull away, when I spell out the letters in this delusional mind and watch them fall into her lap, “Quentin.”

I want to tell her that I would worship her, that this temple of mine could be dedicated to every rule of religion she follows but instead her name is followed by desperation, “Please don’t ever leave.”

What’s the temple got left to offer when the alter’s been stripped away?

Last Edit: Dec 21, 2015 13:33:02 GMT -5 by Deleted

rook
Veteran Member

2,361 POSTS

Pronouns: he/him
last seen Sept 26, 2023 15:42:53 GMT -5

who needs another thing to be sad about?

come and join the party, leave anxieties behind [mylee/rook] Dec 23, 2015 19:41:04 GMT -5

Post by rook on Dec 23, 2015 19:41:04 GMT -5

GO GET PUNCHED FOR THE LOVE CLUB

we're just a group of your white blood cells fighting off parasites
we're your system mechanics trying to fix this machine
what's the one thing that has more speed, more strength,
and goes deeper than us?
a nuclear submarine

She doesn't taste like Mara tasted. Cataclysams of stars imploded when our lips first met on a drunken night in a circle of friends playing truth or truth or truth and I always dared of course. Why wouldn't I? It meant nothing and we were drunk, but Mara tasted like mint and lavender, all the things in the world that were fresh ran through me. Lana doesn't taste fresh, she tastes ripe. She tastes like strawberries and cherries and yet also charcoal. She's like a burning plummet of life.

She pulls away and I find myself wanting more, but I ignore passion and demonstrate some slight amount of self restraint. Mad for me, an individual so built on burning passion and ignorance.

"Quentin."

My name is a tattoo in the thick air around us. Ink spreads across my vision, and I find myself closing my eyes, lingering that daydream she span me into. In that short moment, I was something. I wasn't broken. I was alive and burning. Mara didn't matter.

No, what the fuck?

Mara matters. Of course she matters, she always matters. She's Mara, and I loved her. I kissed someone else and I might as well have pissed on her grave.

No.

She wouldn't want me thinking like that, would she? She'd say: Be with whoever. She didn't even know how I fucking felt about her, so how can I be betraying her? Lana is wonderful, and brilliant, and she is here right now, here for me. Comforting me. I should feel no guilt, but it's a furnace inside my very core, dissolving me from the inside. Painful, searing guilt.

"Please don’t ever leave." She begs me.

Oh. But now I mean something to someone else. Someone real, someone alive. Someone two inches in front of my face who is asking for me to be there for them. How can I be fit to be there for anyone when I can't even take care of myself? I don't know. I'm a mess. I need to not be a mess, I need to be like I was before. Before the Games and the death and the drugs. Before Mara died, before Draco died, before I died.

I have to go back, to the begi- to the beginning. To before.

Lana, right here, right now, is my rock. It's like I've been drifting in space, not being able to stop my forward ~~or backwards?~~ momentum for years and years, and she's a rescue vessel here to take me home. To bring me back. I've been lost for so long, back before I even lost the people I loved. Back to before, before I was Quentin, before I was Peters, before the drugs, before the pain and the fighting and the backwards space rebel attitude.

Back when I was Petal Quill, that innocent little girl who had just lost her mother. That's the day I became lost. My father never stopped searching for me, I know that because I watched him search for me year after year. I tracked him because I still cared about where he was and how he was, but he must have known that I didn't want to live that life any more. I was raised by liars and thieves so that I could lie and steal, and that was better than being a good little institutionalised girl who would never see the stars. It was so naive, of course it was. Life would have been better with my father, I would never have met these misfits who I care so much about, and I wouldn't be like I am now - always two minutes away from death. Flirting with my fate on drugs and abusive substances.

He searches for years, and I watched him from the rooftops and behind buildings, all the while living the life of a looter.

I'm not even that crook any more. I am so, so lost. Where are the constellations that used to guide me? Whenever I look up to the night sky now, all I see is horrifying black.

"Asprin." I say, ink spreading over my eyes again and threatening to slip me into unconsciousness, before remembering that once upon a time, before I fell off the wagon, I used to have manners: "Please." I add.

"And kiss me again."

knocked off my feet by the backdraft brought back to earth
oxygen clears my head and I just gotta say
oh you're not gonna believe this
you can't perceive this
this is like nothing you've seen before
but lucky for you
yea lucky for you
this is an open door

word count: 712, graphics: rook
theme: ssssssnakepit by enter shikari

HERE'S TO BEING MY BEST FRIEND

an hourglass is just a glass with sand inside

Deleted

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last seen Apr 18, 2024 16:25:26 GMT -5

come and join the party, leave anxieties behind [mylee/rook] Dec 28, 2015 11:55:36 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2015 11:55:36 GMT -5

My father enjoyed early mornings, but never the sunrise. He was enamored with the idea of awakenings, of crisp air and the moments when the sky would lighten but not be set alight. He would take me to the corner where memories and newfound fear intersected, spend the hour before the sunrise with his daughter in tow only to return home when the sun would break the horizon. I’d plead with him to stay, just once, until the sky had been painted by a hand far greater than our own— told him the hours before were to him as this sunrise was to me, but he denied this claim with a simple smile and a shake of the head.

(“Alana, how can you love something you’ve never seen?”)

I’ve been a martyr for blind faith for far too long; I deserve something more than a sheltered heart and dimmed vision.

I have never seen the sun rise.

When I had left that home— when I had left Nellie with simply a note and a misconstrued apology, I had spent the night sheltered in dark alleys, turning corners with a quiet pace and spitting curses at those who would lay their palms against my skin— (“Pretty girl, let me show you something new.”)

Goddamn, how long have I been blind?

I count the passing seconds like they are not fading with increasing velocity, like my palms are not losing the grip upon her hips— letting go means losing and I have lost too much. She is slipping, waning through the cycle of another night passed, what can I mean to a girl who has seen the world? I am a narrow field of vision, the close perspective on a big picture, Quill plays on a scene far greater than what I can offer her, besides, what do I have to hand to her other than my faith?

An offering of little worth; I do not let my grip falter.

I watch her with a quiet mind, see the phases of the moon in her eyes as she stumbles, finds a grip on something greater and returns the gaze. I am small, the body of a girl in something far greater, but right now, I am her whole perspective. I am here, after all.

I do not know where I would be laying my claim otherwise.

This barren wasteland of a life no longer quenches my thirst. My sister, still deprived, lingers behind in a past I do not wish to see when I drink from the fount. This guilt is ever-growing, consuming the hollow spaces of my bones and weighing me to the ground I wish to leave. How do I bury my past when it is still engraved into the veins that have the simple power to rid myself of them?

She speaks, a simple word, “Asprin,” and I am reminded that even the sunrise ends. The beauty is ever-failing— if it is missed, the fault falls to the eyes of the ill-timed beholder. I meet her gaze, empty in hindsight but so goddamn full now. I have see her mine for gold in her own veins, rip apart the last remaining bones in her structure and light them ablaze to find warmth.

“Please.”

I watch her with pleading mind, two hands still locked around her hips because I am afraid that if one loses its grip she will be gone. Lost in another bottle, another pill, another girl— she did not promise me that she would not leave. Why would she, when there are so many other perspectives to take, besides, I am simply an empty offering at her alter.

My muscles aching I reach for the bottle, one hand still upon her hip because I am no longer looking for the sunrise— I’ve found it, and my god, it is glorious. It is alight, burning, and desperate, still connected to my fingertips I remove the lid and place a single pill in her palm before pressing one to my own tongue.

The ache of hollow space being filled by the weight of this guilt will not be contained by this.

But even the sunrise has its beginning, my own defined— I am shaking under the weight of one palm still pressed to her hip and the other resting against my own ribs. This anxiety reminding me of the last hollow space in my body, this chest, this heartbeat does not understand individuality.

I am lost, beginning to spiral under the weight of the unknown until her voice breaks the air once more, “And kiss me again.”

My body aches, my hands still shaking I find her initiative sitting in my lap, handed down by a larger perspective. I lean forward, hooking an empty hand around her neck and resting my forehead against her own, “I guess I have always had a thing for girls who know how to balance demands and manners.”

At the moment when I kiss her a second time, I find myself no longer looking for the sunrise, but another way to say thank you.

[ words: 843 ]

rook
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who needs another thing to be sad about?

come and join the party, leave anxieties behind [mylee/rook] Jan 24, 2016 19:29:13 GMT -5

Post by rook on Jan 24, 2016 19:29:13 GMT -5

GO GET PUNCHED FOR THE LOVE CLUB

we're just a group of your white blood cells fighting off parasites
we're your system mechanics trying to fix this machine
what's the one thing that has more speed, more strength,
and goes deeper than us?
a nuclear submarine

Come inside, out the wind, out the rain. I'll keep you safe, safe from everything. The world is too big, Lana. It's too big. So we'll make it small, contain it inside these four walls. It'll be our safehaven, here. Nothing can touch us, not when we're together. Not when we're touching, skin on skin, lips on lips. We're unbreakable, floating through space, and yet pressed to the ground, unmoving and so very present and here. Timeless, contradicting boundaries and reversing convention. Me and her.

She places the aspirin in my hand, and I try to focus for a second, sitting upright. The room is spinning like a hurricane, and whilst I am void of any pills or alcohol, the grief has drugged me. I am starved of normality, latching onto Lana's lips like they're the only thing I can make sense of. I need to stabilize, I know that now. I need to, for her. I can't be this mess any more. I can't fall further back down to where I was last night and last week and last month.

I raise the pill to my mouth and let it roll down the back of my throat. It makes no difference at this point, I know it will take a while before the pain starts to go away. The headache, the sickly feeling in my stomach, the throbbing throughout every artery in my body. It will fade away, like the paint on these walls, like the dying stars, like Margaret DuBois. It will all fade, and everything will be okay again, because even though things fade away, it doesn't mean they're gone.

Besides, there's always new things to discover. Wonderful, brilliant, new life. Right in front of me. I know that now. I know because her hand is wrapped around the back of my neck and her forehead is pressed against mine and I smile. It's wonderful. I'm smiling.

"I guess I have always had a thing for girls who know how to balance demands and manners." She says with an edge, and before I can smile again, she kisses me with force. I fight back, pressing my lips harder against hers. I wrap my arms around her neck and fall sideways, pulling her with me as we lie on the floor, one entity, together.

Maybe it's time to let Mara go. Maybe it's time for this, maybe I needed it. I shouldn't feel guilty. She wouldn't want me to. I can't sit and stagnate. I can't allow myself to rot and decay any more than I already have. I'm so broken, but even broken people can put themselves back together, they have to, especially if someone else needs to lean on them. How can Ratts and Garrett keep going if I'm not with them. I mean, I'm down. I'm really really down, and I don't know if I'll ever be that die-hard rebellious daredevil I once was. I was so fucking fearless. No one could touch me. Now it feels like I'm in a vaccum, and every molecule around me is attacking my fibres.

They need their gang-leader back. I mean, the two of them are inseparable and will probably be fine but-... I'm the chief asshole. Plus, I need to apologize to the big guy. Last time I saw him I tried to force him to volunteer for Draco. That was low. Unlike me. Actually, it's exactly like me. Not like me now.

I roll onto my back, pulling Lana on top of me. I feel her entire weight on top of mine. I'm crushed by how infinite she is, and yet she is so light I could lift her up.
"I don't know if this is the right thing, but it feels right, and I haven't felt right in a long, long time."

knocked off my feet by the backdraft brought back to earth
oxygen clears my head and I just gotta say
oh you're not gonna believe this
you can't perceive this
this is like nothing you've seen before
but lucky for you
yea lucky for you
this is an open door

word count: 636, graphics: rook
theme: ssssssnakepit by enter shikari

HERE'S TO BEING MY BEST FRIEND

an hourglass is just a glass with sand inside

Deleted

0 POSTS
last seen Apr 18, 2024 16:25:26 GMT -5

come and join the party, leave anxieties behind [mylee/rook] Mar 25, 2016 15:13:12 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2016 15:13:12 GMT -5

I have never once had the desire to fly.

My sister was made of feather-light wings, of thoughts built on bones made of lost hopes and glimmering things. She was reflective, tossing her thoughts on any surface that would show them and praying to the sky in the morning—in the evening—

The day our mother died.

My sister prayed to a blood red sky that spoke in shades too similar to what I wiped off of the hallway floor— I found hatred; I found a cracked spine and bones that were too heavy to spare space for anything but denial, and still, burdened by the weight of that which we were not to bear my sister found the space for hollow bones.

She told me that she would pray for me.

I told her I’d be damned if there was a god that would place merit on an already broken back—the weight of her prayer collapsed my lungs the night I left.

I have been struggling to breathe since.

Everything now is short-natured— single words, a remaining bullet, one prayer left to spare for the girl standing on the street corner with that damned gun in her hand. My father knew that I thought of short-term consequences, and I suppose that is why he placed two bullets in the chamber to begin with.

I have never been a recipient of charity that is built on good intentions.

I suppose that is why my muscles tighten as we tumble, when she lands I am instinctively reaching for the gun whose bullet I had long spent into a night sky that would never return the favor— my pockets have been empty; these bones have been dense.

I am afraid of crushing her under the weight of my own consequences.

Besides, I have seen how fragile a girl with lost veins is to break.

I begin to panic, lost in the afterthoughts of blood splattered upon the wall and a father’s voice in my ear, “You’re just like her.”

No, she is dead and I have envied her since.

But the voice that long haunts empty chambers of forgotten guns is replaced by the metal nature of the bullet itself; Quentin’s voice is made of steel but it does not give me the power to fire.

I become the recipient of harnessed strength— the exact definition of weight that dense bones are meant to carry. “I don’t know if this is the right thing, but it feels right, and I haven’t felt right in a long, long time.”

I become the timekeeper, the maker of clocks to count the days that remain behind my breathless memory. I see the evening flashing in her eyes—my god, how the fragile girl is so easily broken yet mended by that which I had placed in her palms.

Maybe the secret to flying was breaking so many goddamn times that you never truly had the chance to formulate anything other than the beginnings of recovery.

I become the prayer, the thing I had vowed would never overtake this body in the fears that it would break what remained. But in the moment that she tells me she feels right; that my body pressedcrushingheavy against her own is something more than a burden I am struck by lightning, by every prayer my sister ever spoke in the effort to heal these heavy bones.

It took her one bullet in the barrel of the gun.

I wonder what she could accomplish with the chamber fully loaded.

I have never been this proponent of right or wrong, of morals and broken minds, but in the moment that hangs over both of us I do not see human nature; I do not see the complexity of a world I had once deemed useless.

My muscles relax; my breath hitches once more as I place my head in the crook of her neck for fear of any space between us leading to the closing line of this hymnal—

I haven’t heard music in years.

But in the only hollow space I have ever welcomed I hear the tune dancing in my ear, the rhythm creeping down my throat and reminding me that this chorus is not one I have ever heard before, that this too would end but not right now, not if I was yet to sing along.

I remind myself that being a martyr for this faith will one day mean dying for someone other than myself. What a world it is that for once I can accept this.

I lift my head from her shoulder, watch her reaction in fears of pressing too harshly upon her body and smile when she does not disappear from underneath me.

“Your guess is just as good as mine.”

She does not know that I am truly terrified.