slovenly heart ; merlin & perry
Jul 3, 2017 20:25:20 GMT -5
Post by fox on Jul 3, 2017 20:25:20 GMT -5
P E R R Y
► ► ►
life is messy -- the only archetype of being that he knows at seventeen. and he hopes, with a perilous fire in his blood, that he will never lose the bruises of all the dumb things he’d done.
he’d lost the childhood ideal of bravery in knightly feats from storybooks, he’d lost the pining for adventure in meandering paths at the needle of a compass. but the mess of memory, sprawling tumultuously underneath his skin, would always be there, promising him he was made of organic matter. warm, rare, existent.
he hopes, lifting his hands to the dimming light, observing spider web scars, that there would be more to life than the abstinent letters of being a zodiia waiting for him.
he hopes, selfishly.
somewhere, underneath leafy anatomy, peeling back the skin of quaking aspens, clonal colonies of root systems, smoke rising over water, underneath the wilderness of this scenery, this immeasurable youth -- he is certain he has to grow up soon. soon, or later, there will be a moment he’ll wake up and feel differently, wake up and watch the sunshine state of his eyes disappear to the concrete of adulthood.
he feels like a landscape, epochs and greenery sprouting from his bones, but this is just a house.
lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling -- remembering last night at two a.m., unlocking the door of the house to a weary atmosphere that hit his lungs like the humid summer air, made his head spin, out of breath, and his mother had been waiting in the living room. in the end, he supposes he always gets caught, always feeling stupid for making her worry. but he had never been repentant enough to keep the fury of something untamed and uncertain within his own chest, spilling this pain onto the pristine name he wore.
there is a forest fire at the depth of his lungs. he breathes, considers the window, dreams of the sky.
he’d spent years sitting on tall heights, dropping metres to the rush of the wind, district seven below him in a cool, misty kiss. but now there’s a guilt, an ambiguous weight, soft and curling like a cat stretching in the bottom of his stomach as he stares at the open window.
it’s instinct, he supposes, turning towards the open sky, listening to cicadas after dark in the summer, buying ice pops and eating them in the outskirts of the district, matching constellations through fissures in the tree line.
one day, he will get older, he promises himself, become responsible or something like it.
but not today.
the stomach cat purrs. he lets it sleep.
feet hanging out the window, drain pipe like a ladder -- there’s a quiet click of a door just as he’s about to leave, orange light spilling into his bedroom, illuminating the unlawfulness of his act.
he looks over his shoulder slowly, pausing to meet merlin’s gaze. and there is a moment, perched on the sill, moonlight on the walls and over his brother’s eyes -- a moment, and he says nothing, thinking about dropping from the third floor to escape, disappearing just like a trick.
he stops himself, sleepy fault opening to a bitter taste, harsh guilt gaping bloody and raw.
“lock the door.”
well fuck. there is, perhaps, something private to all the dumb things he does at night. there is something stupidly special he reserves for himself in this kind of recklessness.
but life is messy. life is messy and there is only so much more time left to live in this sort of chaos. he looks at his brother, the silhouette of his frame lit up by the newness of the night.
“want to come?”
he’d lost the childhood ideal of bravery in knightly feats from storybooks, he’d lost the pining for adventure in meandering paths at the needle of a compass. but the mess of memory, sprawling tumultuously underneath his skin, would always be there, promising him he was made of organic matter. warm, rare, existent.
he hopes, lifting his hands to the dimming light, observing spider web scars, that there would be more to life than the abstinent letters of being a zodiia waiting for him.
he hopes, selfishly.
“sorry mom--”
“go to your room.”
“go to your room.”
somewhere, underneath leafy anatomy, peeling back the skin of quaking aspens, clonal colonies of root systems, smoke rising over water, underneath the wilderness of this scenery, this immeasurable youth -- he is certain he has to grow up soon. soon, or later, there will be a moment he’ll wake up and feel differently, wake up and watch the sunshine state of his eyes disappear to the concrete of adulthood.
he feels like a landscape, epochs and greenery sprouting from his bones, but this is just a house.
lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling -- remembering last night at two a.m., unlocking the door of the house to a weary atmosphere that hit his lungs like the humid summer air, made his head spin, out of breath, and his mother had been waiting in the living room. in the end, he supposes he always gets caught, always feeling stupid for making her worry. but he had never been repentant enough to keep the fury of something untamed and uncertain within his own chest, spilling this pain onto the pristine name he wore.
“you’re seventeen, perry, don’t you understand? you can’t just do whatever you like and just disappear. you can’t be -- you can’t be like your father.”
there is a forest fire at the depth of his lungs. he breathes, considers the window, dreams of the sky.
he’d spent years sitting on tall heights, dropping metres to the rush of the wind, district seven below him in a cool, misty kiss. but now there’s a guilt, an ambiguous weight, soft and curling like a cat stretching in the bottom of his stomach as he stares at the open window.
it’s instinct, he supposes, turning towards the open sky, listening to cicadas after dark in the summer, buying ice pops and eating them in the outskirts of the district, matching constellations through fissures in the tree line.
one day, he will get older, he promises himself, become responsible or something like it.
but not today.
the stomach cat purrs. he lets it sleep.
feet hanging out the window, drain pipe like a ladder -- there’s a quiet click of a door just as he’s about to leave, orange light spilling into his bedroom, illuminating the unlawfulness of his act.
he looks over his shoulder slowly, pausing to meet merlin’s gaze. and there is a moment, perched on the sill, moonlight on the walls and over his brother’s eyes -- a moment, and he says nothing, thinking about dropping from the third floor to escape, disappearing just like a trick.
like your f a t h e r.
he stops himself, sleepy fault opening to a bitter taste, harsh guilt gaping bloody and raw.
“lock the door.”
well fuck. there is, perhaps, something private to all the dumb things he does at night. there is something stupidly special he reserves for himself in this kind of recklessness.
but life is messy. life is messy and there is only so much more time left to live in this sort of chaos. he looks at his brother, the silhouette of his frame lit up by the newness of the night.
“want to come?”
