how to unfold a memory [shelby; day eight]

To my deaddearest sister
Hear my last final plea.
Every second past midnight
Recalls a lost memory seen. And when
Eternity loses
What wonder was left
I pray for the night
That it might choose to come back.

I stand— my spear in Lucas’s neck and my hand still clutching the end of the blade, and I scream. There is no fear to be found in alerting anyone near of my location, and there is no silence that cannot be broken here. His cannon sounds, and my hand goes limp, the blade weighing his body down and bringing my own along with it.

I try to tell him I am sorry, but my body knows that I am not a liar and refuses to take part in the nature of sin. I mouth the phrase several times, hands covering my mouth and muffling the slightest hint of sound that was attempting to break free, but no— I cannot stay here and pretend that I will bury him when his body stills and his eyes shut.

I cannot stand here and look at him as though I had not told him in his final moment of thought that I had killed a child he had cared for so dearly. The threat of survival set aside, I could not hurt him any more.

When I turn my back on Lucas O’Hara’s dead mind and dying body, I do not run. Instead I sit, facing the window of the mansion and attempting to shove the thought of his bleeding neck and marked body out of my mind.

“I’m so sorry.”

But it is not an apology written to Wylla Lysander or Lucas O’Hara. No, this is an apology written to a sister who has watched my attempted suicide for eight days over and not only seen failure in the notion, but in my execution of the task as well.

If only Cha Leviane had any use for apologies or excuses.

But after spending hours upon hours watching her, studying the smallest movements or expressions on her face, and finally working up the courage to ask her what she was thinking about, I had learned that the only thoughts floating through her mind were those that would bring her any closer to tangible truth she could lay her hands upon.

She was made of stars, galaxies, and the figurative, but she longed for saving grace that would change that matter that she was made of.

With hands clasped together and head down, I sit quietly and wait for the right words to come to mind before making the mistake of speaking. There was once a day existent where my greatest accomplishment was making my voice heard— where listening to the pitch of my voice resound off the walls was nothing less than orgasmic, but behind the passage of time and the loss of a sister I have come to fear the repercussions of silence more than I have learned to enjoy them.

He taught me that I should only speak when the words I had thought to say were important enough to leave a permanent mark upon the mind. It was my duty to balance silence on my tongue as though dropping it would lead to a consequence indescribable.

But now, with my back to Lucas O’Hara’s forever quiet corpse and my own body as cold as the grave, I have come to the realization that he was not teaching me the value of silence. He was too afraid of the words that he did not believe that he could not bear to hear them, and instead of learning what it meant to have valiant mind and brave heart, he chose to bury himself in the thin veil of false courage.

There was nothing more than pure disbelief traveling through my chest as I sat there, drowning in my own stupidity and disbelief. With eye turned to the sky, I take the empty bottle of tequila and smash it against the pavement, holding tight to the neck of the bottle as shards scatter around my body in the shape of a halo.

Just as the night the window shattered, I find myself stepping carefully over the pieces of myself that I cannot sweep away.

Moving to the edge of the room, right at the windowsill and not a step further, I look over the edge and ponder what my body would look like at the bottom of it.

But there is nothing to be seen and nothing to be found, and so with heavy heart I back away from the ledge and turn my gaze to my pile of belongings set besides shards of glass. With the thought of my spear still caught in Lucas’s neck, I know the probability of my returning to take hold of it once more was slim to none.

Instead, I take hold of the crayon received at the tea party and roll it over in my palm. Illuminant and bright, it gives off a feeling of queasiness just from keeping my gaze focused on it for a second too long. With the memory of a purple heart and knife etched into my mind, I shorten the time of creation until multiple small weapons sit at my feet, threatening to burn my skin if I grasp their handles with anything harsher than a feather’s touch.

When I finally turn around to face Lucas O’Hara, the apology on my lips fades as the spot where he had laid is now empty.