rose hailsham | district four | fin

You don't remember coming to the Hailsham Institute. It seemed to happen one day completely out of your control. You went from waking up in a canopy bed with your favorite stuffed elephant - Trumpet - next to you - the sunlight streaming through a window framed by white and pink curtains. You wake up in a room surrounded by others. Your bed threadbare and the linens itchy. Boys and girls of all ages. The noise loud enough to scare you. To steal your voice from you. You were three years old when that happened. Mutterings of an accident, a fire, that had claimed the lives of your parents. A scar on your palm the only reminder. Their faces blurred but always framed by light. By the sun. You remember a feeling of happiness with them, something you could not quite grasp any longer. Like a memory whose thread was being slow unraveled, you have forgotten them.

You sit quietly as they talk at you. Never to you and never once asking if you understood what was happening. Thrown into this new place and promised a home and family, you crave the touch of your parents even more now. Their voices lost in the din of everyone around you. You don’t speak to anyone and they stop asking you questions about where you came from. Blonde hair and blue eyes silently observing the world around you. Your daydreams start then and you speak in your mind. Weaving stories to yourself as you are left alone. The quiet girl in the corner, playing with dolls by herself.  Clutching her left hand where the only reminder of your old life remains.

Flash forward to six years later. One day the sound came out of you, the words tumbling forward as if you had given meaning to the syllables yourself, and everything had changed. Always quiet and shy, you had finally found a voice. Brought forth by something inside of you, something desperate to get out, you had channeled it into singing. And never looked back. Your days spent honing your voice. Exercising your vocal chords to give expressions to words that you had let sit in your mouth for years. You surprised them all when the girl who barely spoke could sing with such pitch and melody. You had surprised even yourself.

(Fallin' in reverse.

We closed our eyes.

And got lost in our timeless universe.

Dreaming your the sunrise,

With the flowers to feed the soul.)

Friendships spring up around you. Soft tendrils like flowers flowing towards the kids that are around your age. The children all filter in and soon enough, you are all orphans in a mosaic of a family. Time passes quickly enough, between training and lessons. You thrive in the gymnasium - your ability to anticipate your opponent’s moves and parry any hit coming your way with the butt of your spear is rivaled by your ability to duck beneath and attacker and come at him from the backside.

Quite often, you spar with Roan. You grow with him, learning his body as you learn yours. Where he doesn’t expect you to hit. Where to surprise him. His blind spots become your advantages. Your voice isn’t needed here and you are thankful for the silence. Just like he doesn’t need to see the color of your eyes to know that you have been watching him since the moment he stumbled through the doors of the institute.

The quiet way in which you can exist around him brings peace to your mornings. The peace is broken when he joins with Jane - their voices barely a whisper as she describes colors to him. The sunsets in the sky, the glistening of the lake near the house. Things you have described to yourself thousands of times, always with a slight difference when the light hits it just right. But Jane takes your words and gives them to Roan and you stay silent.

Bell calls you a daydreamer and she isn’t wrong. Her words hurt, and it takes you a few years to develop the sort of armor that allows you to smile and sigh. After you have found your voice, you develop a bite to your words when Bell taunts you. The scars you wear from a life torn away from you, from being the shy, quiet girl, vanish with each retort. You lash out and can see that she craves this just as you crave the light. You’re both fighting a different war with each other as the battlefield. But the armor that you wear, the arrogance that hangs around you deflects your true nature. Your vulnerability with all of these beautiful, destroyed souls at the institute.

Kyle teases you and says that you thrive off of the attention from your weekly performances. He isn’t wrong. Your head is in the clouds, but you crave the feeling of everyone’s eyes on you. Acceptance and something like love. Your lyrics clutched to your chest like a cross. Like a prayer that they will love you and that they will stay. Nothing seems permanent here.

The weekends are spent with Roan and Luke - your secret society of tortured souls too distracted by your inner demons and dreams. Roan paints, Luke jokes. You sing. Your voice echoing with the beat up stereo in the corner of the studio, crossing out words and lyrics and rewriting them as Roan is bent over a canvas. The careful way with which his eyebrows screw up to remember the exact color of the water, of the flowers, all carefully labeled from Jane with love wrapping around each letter and word.

(This love was going counter clock wise.

Audible thoughts beyond control.

We saw ourselves in roses,

That's the kinda of wine that can't be sold.)

You wear the moon hanging from your mouth, roses between your legs, and tiaras of Spanish moss on your head, you are a consort of the spirits. You are madness, sanity. You are hell, paradise. Your daydreams threaten to take hold and grow, sprouting out of your mind and into reality. Its moments like that when you escape to the safety of the studio. Steady your breathing and remind yourself that you are whole. That this is real.

Like most sensitive souls, you already know you’re sensitive. You soak up others’ moods and desires like a sponge. You absorb sensation the way Roan’s paintbrush grasps each color it touches on a palette. The ethereal beauty of a dandelion, the shift of a season, the climax of a song, or a certain stirring scent can evoke such wonder it’ll behave as your very breath itself- moving through cells as fuel does to fire and wind does to waves. You hide this. You always have. The thoughts swirling and taking form in your music. The only outlet you have.

You look at Roan and think that you could never admit to how you feel. The words, the I love yous threatens to break free from your mouth and burn down all that you share with him. The sanctuary of your days and your weekends thrown asunder at the mere utterance of anything more than friendship. The rise in your chest and the clench of your heart when he looks away from you. When he clutches Jane’s hands. When he doesn’t grant you his attention. Breathless whispers to yourself that if perhaps you sang louder, perhaps if your pitch was a bit higher, he would fall under your spell. You are just a girl lost in a world of black and white, while he brings colors to your days.

You lose yourself in the things you love, but you find yourself there too. Lost in a darkened corner, your voice stolen from you, you found it, took it back, and made it your own. Molded it into something to give to others, even though it fails you when you see Roan. Even if your words get stolen away with his beautiful eyes. You think yourself beautiful, some days. Hair that shines gold, arms that strike out with violence and strength, legs that can carry you to the edge of the institute with one lungful of air. Bright, blue eyes that shine whenever he speaks.

(I was in so deep we forgot where,

We had once placed out con chaos of hide and go seek.

We found a beautifully broken gem the seduction of silence.

His lips close to mine this world was ours creme de la creme.)

Your days begin and end with him. Your mornings regimented and scheduled down to the last second. Then comes lessons and finally you can escape to your studio, ending your nights on a worn couch with Roan close by. You ache to reach out and grab his tattered notebooks - scribble words to him that explain the bursting in your chest whenever he comes close to you - but you lose your nerve the moment the idea takes shape. Amorphous and nebulous, that tiny step to make them something more than smoke and fog holds you back. His body contains the universe and you want to touch every star.

(Sudden contour lines, so numb, so blind,

One way trip to reality only I knew where I needed to be.

Faded footprints leaving nothing behind but traces of you. and a lost mind.

You used to be my favorite daydream.)