suffocating moonlight }} nolive

olive mortuus

Broken lips beneath moonlight kisses and I have only ever known bittersweet happiness. Hushed whispers catching in my throat like broken glass and I swallow blood. Three words, eight letters - sprinkled over three hundred and sixty five days and yet there is no courage to cough up every splinter sunken beneath the surface. Ignorance is his bliss, my agony. But wrapped within thin sheets upon his couch is better than being at home. Waiting for the ghosts to scream my name, sink their claws into my skin and scorn us all for spilling the only blood worthwhile in our godforsaken family.

Nori might make my life a living hell, but it's better than being surrounded by zombies. Death and decay seeps from in between the floorboards, anesthesia soaking into veins not yet rotting and we are gods in every sense of the meaningless word. Pulling hearts from broken cages, sinking our teeth into the beating flesh and the money behind my name is born with blood. It laces every bright green bill clutched in shaking fingers.

It's our one year anniversary. From the day grief turned my fingers into the collar of his shirt, lips pressed desperately to his own and when he kissed back it felt nothing like the fairy tale ending I expected. Youth and ignorance turned my expectations on their head. You are mine. I told him.

I can't be. He answered me.

It was right in front of my face. No matter the sugary sweet delusions, the caramel upon his lips that begged my teeth to sink themselves within the skin. A cycle repeats, I chase him round and round in a circle that breaks only when my strained heart shatters. The fucker is resilient, I'll give it that. Stretched like strawberry taffy and yet I set candles upon the window sill.

He's out. I dunno where. Probably the bar.

I've had to stop drinking 'cause it has the tendency to bring razors to my throat.

And I ordered takeout because I can't fucking cook.

White roses find their home in ornate glass and that was money thrown down the drain, the kind of money that falls out from my ears. Meaningless gestures for empty smiles. Polite gratitude that means nothing. I tell myself I'm doing this to fill empty time. I know I'm doing this because I care. Ignorance is agony, but it is far better than pathetic truth. Than admitting hours of thought and planning were sunk into a gesture whose climax is bound to be stained with tears.

A one year anniversary celebration. I stole my twin sister's makeup to stain my lips a subtle red, staring at the mirror broken two years prior by a child encased in absolute rage. I can still see my blood on it's edges. I told them not to fix it.

Staring at myself is painful. Age has made my edges sharper, I do not recognize myself in the overgrown brown mange settled just above my ears. Olive Mortuus was nothing but absolutely put together. White button-ups tucked into black slacks and there was gel staining bleached hair. And Nori was chaos, forehead pressed against my own plunging me into the eye of our storm and-

yeah, I dunno where Olive Mortuus went. Poor fucker's probably dead in a ditch somewhere because the man I stare at looks nothing like him. Like me. Even after I've styled his hair for the first time in what feels like a century, strangers surround me. Whispering. Pleading. I haven't opened the windows since she died.

I don't want to let Hyacinth out, but I feel as though I have trapped myself within. Soul sewn to grief, to Celia's earring shoved through unpierced cartilage, to Hyacinth's necklace settled upon my throat. I wonder if they miss them, my siblings, I don't often ask. Feelings are better left spilled upon Lysette's doorstep. She who I am not afraid to scare away with bitter dreams and fears.

I was a fool to think she was ever a monster hunter like I. No, Lysette Grey tames the demons hidden within.

But no matter her unconditional acceptance and friendship I find myself seeking shallow company. He whom I am too afraid to ask simple questions. Speak simple phrases. His answers have stung a thousand times over.

I can't be.

So I sit upon his couch, dressed in clothes that grow tighter with every breath and I await only disappointment. I almost yearn for it, by now. Like an addict who has come to expect the burn of ice through bruised veins. It matters not what he thinks of me if, by the end of the night, his lips rest upon mine. 'Cause I might hate him by now but I hate myself just as much.