flutter in the dark; atlas [day 3]

Crimson shackles tether me to the ground; it wouldn't be just for me to rise and leave a man like Ronnie Cheyne at the mercy of a gravitational pull. So my muscles twist and my bones pop to the melody of the arena's cannon fire is the only harmonic with a sense of coherence here. Silence I only wanted to spin at my heels is instead shredded and broken by pieces of the arena taking its toll and the weight of my black lies coming to full circle.

I told him we’d be okay because I thought we simply would be.

Because I was named after a tall titan who held the sky on his hollow shoulders, who knew the feeling of the clouds resting in his palm and the rain in his hair – a tall titan who knew burdens just as I did. We had to be okay because I’m Atlas, and those seven letters written in cursive attached to my first name don’t mean a damn thing under the weight of Orion and a thousand other constellations traced with something that feels better than a dream, something more real than an astral fantasy.

Shackle my feet and chain my tongue – I am a liar lost and I will be found. I told him we’d be okay because I thought we had to be, not because we were the heroes fathers would teach their children as they gazed into a night sky but because we were dominant and we were cut from the same stone. We both shared the bittersweet nectar of blood on our hands but it wasn’t simply for ourselves, it was for each other. It was a reality I couldn’t bury beneath the eye of the needle or a neck of the bottle, but he spent the day clung to my torso as we listened to the sound of our borrowed time clicking and grinding to a halt, I hold the sky on my shoulders but I swear he was more than just the supernova hidden behind the clouds.

He could've been a galaxy to last eons.

We killed together, fought together and I held his life in my hands just as much as he held mine. Yet he was a plethora of mysteries I never thought to solve and words I never thought to define because he didn’t have a contents table to help me decipher what he was. I never even knew his favourite colour; was it the sea blue of the ocean that only remained broken by riptides? Or was it possibly the crimson we spent three days blurring lines with? I don’t know if he fought so he could retain the feeling of sea shells resting in the palm of his hands or if it was to feel the touch of another one last time. All I know if that he had a brother and he had a medal.



My humanity shattered with the single thrust of a spear; morality can be personified with the saying of ash, smoke and mirrors and a bitter taste in my mouth. So why does the embodiment of that boy’s accomplishments feel so heavy in my hand? Heavier than the beating heat of the sun against my back and burning clusters of anaemic stars across my back. It makes no sense that people who didn’t belong in a kingdom I failed to corrode only know decay while I do not dare to wear Ronnie Cheyne’s accomplishments around my neck for fear the weight of the bloodshed of three days snap my neck.



Diorite’s screams are a mantra on loop and they don’t stop reverberating through my mind like a heartbeat that only knows how to beat in steady cycles in the absence of fear. One second she was smiling and I felt the absence of stars once more, her fragile skin pressed against mine and the twitching of-



And then we’re dying.

Corrode the kingdom to save the people; I embody failure in the presence of fear because I am a fuck-up but this is not what makes me a liar. I didn’t once promise Diorite Fray my life in trade of hers and I didn’t once offer my axe to help her because she knew where she stood and I knew mine. She was supposed to be another notch on the bedpost, another memory to share with the boys in the career centre – (“that’s another Fray under your belt, eh?”) She was supposed to be the enemy because she bore the flag of Fray along her shoulders and no promise of a truce in sight.

I’d never even known her for anything but her surname before the train, before we both laid our fingers across death’s skeletal palms. Only that she was a girl who cared too much and for a second she saw through the ash, smoke and mirrors and I saw her for something other than a four-letter surname. But I never knew her and I don’t think I want to; Ronnie Cheyne was a galaxy but she was a nebula; she was more permanent than the make-believe wishes of shooting stars she deserved more than a canon.



A nebula and yet she still burned my trembling flesh with scars deeper than any red sun. She was my exit route but I should’ve known she would end up like the rest, simply temporary.

A liar lost and waiting to be found; I told her she'd always be permanent in the heat of the moment.

I want to remember her as the girl who cared too much but she can only be another notch upon a bedpost – another vessel swallowed whole by a personification of our mortality. Another scream to be silenced, another death rattle followed by



Only signalled by canon fire.

But I don’t know how truly alone I am, I only know that I’m alive. I know that I’m alive from the cold shiver that passes down my back from the soft breeze, from the creaking and shifting of my bones and sickening smell of roses surrounding me and the feeling of wax softening in my right hand and weight shifting the bones in my left followed by the twisting in my stomach and the crimson stitching falling loose along my heart.

It’s almost comforting to watch untested kill intent waste away.

The pink axe joins the god-defying spear and slides through my fingers as another pool of wax. In horror I turn my eyes to the final gift from an ally, expecting it would follow suit and but hoping it wouldn’t. “Please, don’t leave me, don’t leave me here.” And my words are simply a tremble pressed against the surface of the golden prize, I hope no one heard that.



Held by madness, pressed to the ground by grief, the edge of a random crayon I do not think to properly examine is pressed against the ground and is already drawing a line of green that resembles the colour of asparagus. No tears to mar the image, no blood to blur the line, it starts off as what almost appears to be a fan but I do not stop. The edges become razor sharp, sharp enough to impale, sharp enough to slice, sharp enough to kill. It’s easy to imagine what happens if this was to be dragged across someone’s throat.  She'll need a weapon and so will I.

I cannot accept solitude while Salome is out there, the core of her stars still burning strong.

“Salome!” Driven by instinct yet regretted by rationale, I catch my breath and curse.

In the seconds that follow my call I await in silence, expecting the Nakom swarm to reform and complete what could only have been delayed. In the seconds that follow I almost want them to because all I’ve done is corrode the bonds of anyone with the bad sense to get to know what lies below the ash, smoke and mirrors. Corrode the kingdom and save the people, I am caustic through and through and yet I’ve never cared to try and save the people closest to finding me from becoming another harmonic in a symphony of cannon fire.

When the gears that drove Diorite and Ronnie grind to a rusted halt, I do not suppress screams for the moments lost but because I am still present to lament on the moments that could have been.