Khaleesi Sommerling // D10 // FIN

. khaleesi sommerling ♕ 16 ♕ district 10 .

It takes four letters to soften the stone lodged beneath my ribs.

It doesn't even need to be sounded out. All I have to do is see it. Hold it in my hands, taste it on my tongue, have it pass through my nostrils. I may be a girl who learned from the best to be more reserved, who needs to learn how to keep her cool at times. But as the sky burns into ashes, as it soon matches the freckles that decorate my face, as it paves the way for blankets and forehead kisses and bedtime stories...

...I'm still just as fragile as those four letters all the same.

It's just the way it is, how things are. And District Ten could not be a better representation of that.

My family is yet another line of sheep, nervously prepared for its lambs to be given up for the slaughter until they are no longer eligible. A day that sweeps the community with the sharpest dread, but I'm still here. And so peace is maintained across our ranch.

And I'm still surrounded by those four letters.

They annoy me, a lot of the time. The cats ripping up our curtains and leaving more lines to trace across our hands and wrists, Dad rocking his foot against the wood floor, pile after leaf pile, it's so easy. So easy for little mistakes and accidents to happen, and for me to be so hot and bothered by them. Messes and chaos and inconveniences, such a goddamn bother and so draining of my energy that's better spent elsewhere, but none of it lasts forever.

It's a double-edged sword, for eternity to not be a possibility in this world. Storms pass, but so does the calm. Sometimes I worry--just a few years left in me before I can break away from these chains of mine, but what if that day never comes? What if I can no longer hold bundles of fur against my shoulder as they rumble in my ear with happiness, what if I can no longer have more of Mom's kisses and Dad's hugs when they did come about?

What if that day never comes for the people I care about in the world of assignments and textbooks? One day, the seat that housed a voice of gossip and laughter is no longer filled. No more greetings in passing, no more butting heads on group projects, no more late night talks.

I don't want any of it to end.

I'm not good at showing that, but God, did I not want any of it to end.

There are things that need to get done and things I want to be done, crossed off my bucket list, I still gotta try and open up and be more emotionally available to people.

But there's a reason I'm not, isn't there?



It takes five letters to break apart the rock that sits in my chest.

Didn't matter how much of a relationship I had with the person--or animal. Didn't matter if there wasn't one at all.

I take it personally, no matter what.

Funny how you do all that you can and still feel helpless when it comes down to it. Damn this heart of mine, something in-between but I wish it ran one way or the other in complete form.

Instead, I'm left dwelling over what I could've done to prevent visualizing a noose around my best friend's neck, or waking up to a dead calf because it was too late to save him. A stranger joining a field of bodies because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, an emaciated dog on the side of the road, I'm always reminded that I'm only a shadow and it's a weight that could make my back give out at any given moment.

Some days are better than others.

But as I distract myself by filling silver with milk, herding cattle to the barn, handling the eggs that the chickens lay, are these thoughts banished how they formed.



It takes Life to reform it, and begin the cycle all over again.

Though Death sends my emotions spinning into a whirlwind of discord, I take advantage of my life and my chores and it slows with me, as I absorb all of their details.

There's nothing I love more than walking up to the front yard, and seeing how fire red stripes trot their way up to my figure, meowing excitedly in the process and leaping into my arms. How black with orbs of gold follow him, then follow me as I head to the porch and inside. How my parents pop in and say hello, ask me the everyday questions, and a spotted beast paws up at me with a wagging tail. How the chickens and the cows and the horses and the birds and the sheep sing in harmony as a welcome back, when I go tending to their needs.

How when I sit in the nearby meadow with my cats, I notice a group of kids chasing each other and shouting by the forest in the distance, as they usually do. How a butterfly flutters by me, before landing on a patch of violets. How the black cat tries going after it and it flies away, and I pluck the flower it landed on from the earth.

How it feels between my fingers before I tuck it behind my ear.

Even though my mouth runs before my brain can catch up with it sometimes, even though I push others away when they try to get too close to me, even though my parents and I don't bother telling each other what's wrong when something is...it takes Life to soften the stone lodged beneath my ribs.

I'm still just as fragile as those four letters all the same, and as I close my dark eyes and a soft smile creeps its way up to my full lips, I lift a hand to ensure I was still wearing the violet, that it wasn't carried away into the wind.

It wasn't. I still had it.

I hope I can keep saying the same for the life that surrounds me.