our neverland } ana&nate { blitz

You didn't realise until it was too late.

Foolish boy, out 'til dawn. Those boys who followed you around have faded now, growing old and growing up or still clinging to their youth. You're somewhere in-between, caught in the cross hairs of facing your fears and running from them, left to wander aimlessly and pray the bullets don't catch at your skin.

How invincible you once felt. King of a concrete jungle, blind following the blind, your empire state of mind lifting you so far into the sky the ground felt like a lifetime away. That is until the distance between yourself and what was important stretched too far, capillaries plucked from your heart, and you toppled back down to the earth once more.

The impact hit you like a train and yet you hammered on Anastasia's front door until your knuckles bled scarlet and your voice turned hoarse and her father threatened to have you sent away in shackles.

So you left her to her powder-white life, her mirrors, her credit cards and crosses and ceilings neither of you could ever touch (though you tried so hard to anyway, hands stretched towards the sky, laughing like children - once.) The ground on which you fell through became a comfort and you filled yourself up in the hole you had created, letting the earth spill over your eyes, burying yourself in your anguish. Foolish boy, out 'til dawn in strangers sheets and sleepless nights and you started to forget what her reflection looked like, how her hands dances across the walls in her home, how she looked like sunlight.

How she danced with strangers,
how she pushed you away,
how she flew away on clouds of powdered glass towards a heaven you could not give her.

You didn't realise your mother was sick until it was too late, crescents underneath your eyelids, tending to her sunken face."You need to shave," she'd smile kindly. "You need to cut your hair."

She was right - you look terrible.

And you winced as she vomited up blood, every slap of crimson against a bowl a reminder of all you had w a s t e d-

Daylight eclipses dawn and your mother is better, slightly, but the doctors still slip in and out and your father cancels meetings (he never cancels meetings) and there's a knock at your door, a voice floating through your bedroom window with the morning air.

"Nate?"

You swallow sunlight.

And open the front door, after a while.