noah || d2 || cb2

n o a h

Bloody knuckles are so much easier to bear. Skin grows over old wounds and it is plastic stretched across ceramic good as new but so thin that even a breeze might shatter him. "Smile for me." He would mumble with every joke I cracked and every finger brought to the corner of his eyes to wipe away pain that I could never fix. "I can't do it right now so, smile for me." 

Smiles with black umbrellas kissing the clouds, rain like tears down his grandfather's cheeks and his picture was placed upon a casket without the slashes down each wrist and I smiled. It was more painful than I remembered, agony to lift the corners of my mouth toward the sky when the ground is where he made his new home. But I smiled. 

Money was three coins in my pocket and a sword clenched between shaking fingers. Three. Two. One. Money was a hundred dollars slid into my back pocket and a gash down both sides of my neck. I felt alive, with my own life placed upon the line and I wish I could understand the thrill that was taking your own life away.

I don't think I'll ever forgive him.

I smile instead.

I promised I would.