storm decody. / district four

STORM DECODY.

I blink.

Looking in the mirror should never afflict me so deeply.

Chains bind my hands- her blood.

I would have considered myself free if I was not half of my mother. I did not know her well, but I remember her photo printed on wanted posters, and the Peacekeepers knocking at our door to question us. Over. And over. And over again. It is quite the curse to share her blood, but even more so to bear her face.

She was a pirate, a scoundrel, a smuggler, a criminal, a curse. I am just one of the stains she left behind.

I suppose I am lucky, then. I am cursed, just not as deeply and irrevocably as my sister, Sea. She's got her face- right down to the beauty mark on her upper lip- and her hair. She's got her eyes, too, but that's the one thing I share with my estranged mother.

Those eyes.

I remember them- how could I forget, when they are etched into my mind and embedded into my very skull? I see them every time I glance in the mirror. I see them every time I flip through old family photo albums- she will be standing there, like a ghost, hands on her hips, lips twisted into a smirk. A ghost- that is all she is now: she disappeared into thin air on one of her missions along the sea.

She is a ghost, and those eyes haunt.

They were like the sea. Calm, and yet so full of chaos. Kind, and yet so harsh and cruel, like a blade against blood. (Her smiles were not like the sun, warm on my back. They were lightning and rain, the thunder of a storm.) They shared the color of the ocean, too- crystal blue.

Every other part of me is pieces of my father, from the unruly eyebrows, arched as if in curiosity, right down to the elfish features, brought to life by a crooked smile radiating trouble.

My hair leaks down my back in lazy waves. It is pale brown and stained gold by the sun. A halo of frizz sticks up the sky from the top of head from all the humidity of the air, wet with sea, thick with salt.

Father raised me to be good, to tie my laces in pretty bows, to dot my i's and cross my t's. But I've got a taste for ripping the rules to shreds- the only thing that holds me back is fear of being caught, fear of being scolded for my rebellions. There is no thrill in being good. Maybe it's foolish to wish for the night to absorb me, to take me into its arms and ignite me in flames. If that is foolish, than foolish is fun.

I like to get lost. I am a lost girl, right down to my very bones. I like to leave the house through the window half past midnight and run around the streets until black builds up on the toe of my sneaker and the soles of my shoes have turned muddy from running along damp earth. The night makes me immortal- maybe that's why it holds a certain fire in my heart. I don't want to grow old, grow mature, get a job, settle down, and have kids. I don't want to wither like a delicate carnation in the winter just before the frost settles over the land like white lace.

I just want to laugh until my lungs hurt and look into the sunlight without crow's feet around my eyes. I just want to scream "FUCK FUCK FUCK!" with no gentle father to hush me with scorn and the shake of a head in disapproval. I just want to break bottles over tables and not give a damn, 'cause I've got no responsibilities to bind me.

Fuck growing old, and fuck all the responsibilities that come with it, too.