fooled me again, honest eyes | { lenox + jacinta }

I see headstones.

There is an ache in my head and I can't scrub away the pain that comes with the fallout. Death--it lingers--it keeps on coming and going, always coming and going. I suppose it is trying to do me a favour; make me immune to the pain or something or rather, but nothing seems to be able to save me from feeling everything I've felt all over again. Action replay, the memories digging deeper than skin deep to my core. The anxiety and the pins being poked into this wretched heart of mine, the fingers around my neck that threaten to choke and the tightening grip around my bones which keeps them warm, and in the process, breaks them.

Brother like sister.

And though I have tried to see the positives, to look towards the light and be motivated by the greatness it brings, I can't help but feel uncertainty. This grey old ground of Seven has been turned to gold beneath our feet and it has become unholy. Frail and delicate, it has become all the things that make it treacherous to be on. It feels like I am the weight that is on our world, that each of us is just another reason for collapse and against repair. Perhaps we have become so obsessed with the idea of victorship that we never thought it would happen, and so looked at the concept through rose-tinted glasses. This optimism has become regressive, really, it's become a thick pessimism and now, I look out on the world and see chains.

We have become part of the regime. We house a victor, we house a girl who became something that nightmares are made of. Her fibres weaved together by the hands of killers to produce something more machine than human. I wonder if Jacinta Salazar has an ounce of humanity left, I wonder if she still considers this place home despite it holding her past hopes and dreams, the normal ones, hostage. I wonder if she will remember.

They say they all will, but Lord knows not everyone's shoulders are strong enough to cope. Lord knows that not everyone's minds are able to deal with a repeated onslaught of pain; Lord knows that not everyone can offer defences, resilience to those with broken hearts.

Amidst all of the banners, past the posters and between the lines that cheer for victory and strength, there is me. Lenox LaChance--another girl who has had her skin torn off her body and paraded to the masses in the Capitol. My faith is shaking and my mouth is bound to praying in the silence, praying for something better than what I have and what I have been through. Praying that, one day, LaChance will be more than a shoddy attempt at glory.

For now, it is botched. Battered and battled by teens who wage war for some sort of good, albeit difficult to see from this angle. LaChance is a surname that means luck, yet it is lost. Needles in a haystack, our fingers can only traipse through it for so long before they become old and tired, riddled with the pain of broken dreams.

She seems gold but I see the fool's kind.

She sees LaChance in the stars but I see it in every single little thing, every single little detail. Inescapable, everywhere.

LaChance meant luck, but now it is nothing more than the shadow of a sunrise.

I look at her.

I stare at her.

I bend, she bends, but only I break.

"I'm going to pray for you, Jacinta. I hope that you'll do the same for me."

She has committed the murders, but I am the one suffering. I am one of the countless other sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, friends who are suffering. I don't want to feel this again, I don't want it to be me next time. I don't want it to be anyone next time. In fact, I don't even want there to be a next time.

I see headstones like growths on her soul. 

"But just like the rest, I don't know whether to congratulate you or apologise."