i see ➸ frances&lucy

It's better, here. 

Fingers crossed into the dirt with my back to the tree, my right hand, and I breathe easy. Eyes locked on the early showing stars in four p.m. atmosphere. It's better here, it's better alone, where I can be and be and never not be as I raise my left hand and the joint to my lips. I cross an x on my heart with smoke in my lungs, and I cough after exhaling - I am the dragon. And sometimes, being alone is really the only emotion I like to feel. 

Not like Jequirity, maybe like Jequirity - I don't know yet. 

I scratch my chin, the afternoon's crisp air in my lungs laced with nicotine; I don't know if I want to be buried alone. And I don't know why I like being alone. A part of me has felt nothing but it, a part of me is missing in the form of a sister, crossing a single word into my still beating heart; Jasmine. The letters never made it, I like to think. Somewhere a part of me wants to know that she never got the letters, that she isn't twelve years worth of bitterness and maybe she'll somehow get a life better than mine; it's the other half of me that thinks being alone isn't the only emotion I should feel. 

Fuck it. I don't want to feel, my lips around the blunt again as my right hand burrows itself into the ground - I'm Frances motherfucking- something. A last name means too much to be given away, and I've never really cared enough to hold onto one. There's too much power in it, the words Vieuxpointe and Eckhart on my neck like tattoos or pendants and I've never had anything to give back to them, so maybe Frances something is the best thing to call me. 

Teeth bite loosely on my left knuckle and my right hand presses into the dirt, sketching a small nose and buck teeth and closed eyes and freckles. She had freckles, just like me. Her face was skinnier than mine, her cheeks peppered with ginger constellations and we used to sharpie the lines together as we held left hands and she was my sister before the house burned down and we shed last nights and names like snakes - I miss her. No, I don't. At some point you've got to know when to erase, but I never can, lining small shoulders and a skinny neck around the word Jasmine, a portrait to the sand of a girl I lost. 

I cross an x on my heart - "hoping to die."

And I rub my cheeks, pulling the skin of my eye bag flat, I know I need to forget, to forgive and forget but my hair's a frenzy in the shape of a lioness and I can't have regrets. Regrets drown you, and I have enough going against me as it is as I fill my lungs again and burn the cigarette into the ground's portrait. My hand pushes against my knee to get me off the ground and cough into a closed fist, sometimes feeling alone is better than feeling nothing I guess.  

Immediately, I want to fall back down, the weight of living in the pit of my stomach and I kick the dirt, the portrait of my sister covered by violent strides screaming "fuck you!" on repeat - I don't want to feel fucking alone. I want to feel fucking whole, I want to feel like I matter to some exist and I want to scream and I scream and I want to rip my throat, because Frances motherfucking something wants to matter, and I cock my elbow and punch the tree behind me with the crack of my knuckles and shock sets on my face.

"FUCK-" grabbing my scabbed knuckles - "son of a fuckin, god," rubbing my fists. Fuck. I slide back down the tree, my barefeet creating two lines in the ground. A half of me constantly wants to feel alone, while the other half of me just wants to be. Be something, be Frances, be alive, just feel something more than empty but I hold my own hand in a forest of quiet things.

It's better here anyways.