><><Hometown Glory><>< [Chaos]

At times, it's difficult. (Not that it's any different, but you manage. You always do.

Not because you want to, but because you have to.)

"Denver's gone."

Short, simple. Everything you embody and some you wish you could. The stone whispers back in silent words and you can hear her voice inside her head; a waterfall of noise that doesn't make sense but still comforts you in a way that you can never explain.

Grass is soft under your fingers and your eyes trace the carved words again and again, memorizing that one thing that really matters and wondering absently if she's slept enough, if she's going to come back anytime soon.

If people will be able to adjust that for once, you were right.

You understand that they don't believe you; really, you do. It doesn't make any sense because you aren't blinded by the things that aren't really important (money, popularity, greed) and swallow the truth without second thought. Material possessions never worked for you because you keep losing them just like you keep losing people - but it's not your own clumsiness that makes them go, just something else entirely.

After so much searching you can't figure out what it might be, and really, you're not going to try. It has so many possibilities that it makes your head do that strange humming thing, all angry and sad and loud.

(maybe if was more like her, people would listen. i'm so tired of being lonely in a crowd of people.)

Sometimes you wish to shed all of this in those rare moments of palpable regret and become somebody other than what you are. You are and always will be proud of everything you can and cannot be, but those times where the nauseating sequences slow to a halt, you find yourself wondering if it could be easier. A stillborn baby birthed in an alley by an almost mother. Too relieved to grieve she would leave you to remain unstained and unknown.

(Alone.)

But it doesn't work like that - it never has and never will - and you run through the stares and hesitant emotions with an oblivious smile while speaking a language that nobody will ever (care to) understand.

Just because they don't understand doesn't mean you can't. People let things become more complicated than they really have to be, and you hate that. Can't they all just be happy (maybe they're the ones that should really be taking pills, instead of people who run with thoughts stuck in infinite loop)?

Your dreams will always be marked with past intentions and future hopes.

"He's been gone for a long time. So have you. Why aren't you back yet? We miss you. "

There is somebody running; the footsteps crunch delicately and tell a story that you cannot decipher. You're not entirely sure if you want to know - things don't make sense because they hurt you in the end. All simple things speak of sunshine and muted heartbreak and a world that keeps on spinning.

You've always loved to run. The wind, smell, sound. Sight as the world morphs into a singular blur and you're unable to map out where you are; so deliciously lost that you're free to be everything (and anything) you've always wanted. Beyond anything, you're proud of your stamina. You can run faster than all the problems and memories you've forgotten - even the people that keep those thoughts. Eventually you end up so far away from your house that you don't know where you are or what you're doing but that's okay, because you're just so tired that you could die right there and you wouldn't even put up a fight. Sometimes you run so fast that you outlast everything (everyone) and figure out how to brush all these conflicting thoughts away.

Sometimes when the price of putting yourself back together is just too high, you let the wind tear you apart until you don't belong anywhere and you find a new person to be. Running is even better than dancing when it comes to mindless repetition that you need to just clear your mind and go.

At times you'll go so far, so fast, so long, that you'll forgot why you're running. That's always amazing because that's the point; in time, nature will take its toll and you'll forget what you've done, who they are, who you used to be.

Eventually you'll be a blank canvas, ready to be painted on by the borrowed agony of stranger faces.

(i've just always been terrible at waiting.)

"Are you okay? You look sad."

Instinct makes you stiffen because people aren't allowed to touch you - they're too loud and rough and they hurthurthurt because they never know how to handle anything besides their own emotions (so very bright, so very noisy, always frightening).

The voice carries on the winds and you turn your gaze to meet a face that clicks as if it never left - it speaks of cool winter days and warm summer nights - and you smile slightly, responding in that calm hollow voice that always makes people think you've beyond repair. Really, there's things under the surface.

(they just don't care enough to look. you can't fix me, i'm not broken. you have to be full to break and i'm always half empty.)

"I'm sad. It's okay."

There are so many things you wish to say, but your tongue is torn between two choices. People thing you aren't ever sad but that's a lielie filthy lie - but you're naturally buoyant and careful to shadow your sadness because it conflicts so readily with the sunshine that burns brightbright in your soul. They don't get that you can be both at once and that's fine, really, because it's expected that they can only feel it one at a time.

You have to be a special kind of dysfunctional to be a walking paradox.

She looks just the way that you remember but with an added element; she screams of the way Denver acts sometimes, like you want to hug him but you physically can't because he's too warm and too close and seems to suck all the air from your lungs. And not in the good way, when the nameless strangers make your chest arch and mouth drop and all those words you've never said rise up sticky and spew forth in a tangled jumble that doesn't make them sad. No, this speaks of oppression and hopelessness and sweetheart, we need you again. why have you been gone for so long?

It's not surprising that you don't fall back into sync the moment you meet again, but it hurts somewhere deep down that you try and ignore because it always just brings more heartache. You hate that. So, so much.

(it hurts when i'm alone. but i'm never alone. does that make sense?)

"You don't look happy." Maybe she's slept for too long and her muscles have grown tired and she's forgotten how to smile. "Are you still sad?"

your presence still lingers here
and it won't leave me alone

She's everywhere and nowhere in the best of ways and it aches in that pleasant place when it hurtshurtshurts but is supposed to - the dull throb of a heart that needs to fall back into perfect synchronization after being oh so tired from pumping on its own.

(There are silent nights curled around another body you know with a single sweep of your palm, skin slick and comforting under your touch that feels so much like home all these quiet words spew forth with force you've never seen before.)

Your arms come back up and pull her into you, taking in the silk-spun hair that's changed its scent over a year of wishing wanting hoping and that's not right, she smells like somebody else; like nature and sweat and a heavier, musky scent that makes your toes curl in distaste. But it's Lydia none the less and you feel the smooth of her cheek against your neck and cling like a child, never wanting to let go for fear that your prized (possession) companion will be swept away once more into the great unknown. You understand that she was tired and needed to sleep but she's okay and here now and could you not go away again? I lose myself when I'm not with you.

She starts mumbling fragile, broken things that make no sense and hang heavy on that place that you can't describe, weighed down by the countless I don't knows and questions and you cringe because she knows how much you hate it when all the syllables slur together (it makes you think of a raging river you can't escape). Instead you just hold her tighter, rocking back and forth with silent encouragement as she sees the grave and watch her careful grip on confidence begin to crumble at her feet.

(and really, that's the first step. maybe that's why i'm still like i am; i've never let it all die so it can be reborn)

She looks so lost and scared and sad that you go and forsake your trepidations, tangling your tongue to form some sort of explanation that could tell the story of why they never waited for her to come home. "You were sleeping. They didn't think so. I told then but they didn't listen. They never listen. They put it there so they knew where you were sleeping. But they didn't think you were sleeping, they thought you were gone." They fall all over themselves to be heard, tripping from your mouth in a spectacular failure that has you craving something that cannot be found, catching the feeling with splayed fingers and taut thighs. You try (all the time) to remind yourself that you control them, you shape them, you give them purpose. But instead you keep them because they never sound right; until they become thin and weak, until they float away forever, until people give up and leave you alone.

Until you have to erase them completely and start anew.

Things are always complicated when they never mean to be and you hate that (why can't the world just get along?). Even children seem to clue in too early and begin the game that always hurts your head; of lies and deceit and manipulation that eclipses the truth into this thing that doesn't even make sense. You turn it over and over in your fingers (it's always so much easier to feel because it never lies) but can never make sense of it - why the cold clouds your mind and robs you entirely of your faltering verbalizations. Lydia knows how much you hate it, and tried to live as far apart from that as she could. If you knew how, you'd thank her.

(sometimes i wonder how normal kids grew up.)

Maybe the wild and time took her ability to know because she's doing it right now with all these questions that don't make sense and hurt your head when really, it's simple: you were gone and now you're not, can we stop thinking about it now? it's not that difficult so you smile with the force of the setting sun and crouch down beside her, touching the grave and noting how it no longer sings to you.

"You're back now. That's good. Denver will be happy when he comes back." Thoughtful, troubled; you smooth traces of mirth from the soft of your skin. "He's sad. He gets all funny and hugs me too tight sometimes."

Sometimes you think he believes you to be someone else but you let him pretend. Reality hurts to the point where it's hard to breathe and crushes all your imagination into p(r)etty dust; Denver, if anybody, deserves a chance to fly. Fly until his wings tire, until he finds what he wants, until he can go as fast as you to erase all the bad memories.

Until he touches the sun.

She runs.

So you run with her.

You don't expect to see her huddled all strange and lost and dead on the floor with anger and sadness that seems so wrong on a broken frame like hers because it should be empty, but is so painfully full and vacant at once that it makes your head throb.

And it hurts for the girl when you bring fingernails dipped in darkness to drag along the expanse of her skin, slowly and methodically clawing away at the pain that will always hang like a shroud. It clogs underneath and seeps in through your pores but you were always slow to digest the bad things and that kept you safe from harm. Always, always and forever.

(Until one day, it didn't.)

Sometimes you like to wonder silly little things that will never be answered like why do people hurt each other so much or is it possible to be fixed if you were never broken and people can't find the answers so they simply laugh it off like they always do because they've become exceptionally good at seeing you as a not-person and it's so much easier to think that something hard and raw and painful doesn't exist if you don't think about it. You acknowledge that in the way that you always do with a hazy knowledge that keeps the gentle anger from burning its way upupup and out where it can be seen. (It burns your throat and it hurts. But you don't complain. You aren't sure you know how.)

When you can't form words like Lydia all crumpled on the floor your lady makes you write them out instead. It works most of the time but now you even get your words mixed up on paper. You write sad instead of silent twice and put the pen down with trembling fingers because it's kind of automatic now.

(But you don't have any paper, so you're just content to sit on the floor with all your faded regrets looking so old and apathetic around you, trying to distinguish whose is whose because you hold your secret fears and wants so very close to your chest in fear that somebody will take them away.)

Lydia loved to make life into a set series of clear points so she wouldn't get all jumbled up and confused along the way but that's not how life works; life is mysterious and blurred and there are no lines or borders and that's what makes people cross them so often into territory they don't want to be. Lands of Bad Brains and Limp Legs and the quiet certainty that life isn't all sunshine and rainbows but at the same time it kinda is. No matter how much you want to cry you carry on because that's what you do, you're Jessa and thrive in the light. It makes the blotched mess glow but sheds no insight on its magic - you simply scoop up a tangle of unknown words and attempt to paint it on your canvas but only half the letters stick. That creates something that nobody can understand except yourself and you're not sure which you hate more - the feeling that people know you're trying to say something but ignoring it for the sake of convinience, or the fact that it makes you less than human in their eyes because it's okay to quiet what you have to say.

It kills you just a little bit to see the girl that always made you strong (stronger than anything, than the looks and the touches and the fleeting dark that crawls inside and won't ever let go) curled up like the world has broken her shoulders along with everything good and precious, like humanity has finally caught up to her and robbed her of her spark. So you smile sadly and let your hands do all the talking because you hate not knowing what to say what your body has always known and brush back the curtain that forms a halo around her face.

So you smile silently and will all these half formed feelings into existence so that they might expand in the hollow of her chest to make way for something new and fill her to bursting and let that hollow look leave her eyes (that is reserved for you, dancer, she does not wear it with the kind of quiet devastation that you do) that makes her look like a stranger. And perhaps she is in some kind of way because she's finally figured out that life hurts and it's not just something that you have to learn, that it applies to everybody and nobody and the world is mean, sometimes.

But that's okay. Really.

(You're so used to it that the cuts barely hurt anymore and you can feel like a not-person in peace. And they leave you alone, because that's exactly what you are. Not somebody.)

Maybe now you and Lydia can feel subtly shattered together in all the right ways, like how you can carefully piece her back together so you can start searching for the shard(s) that you were missing at birth. You know you'll never find them but whatever keeps her focused and you smile anyway.

"It's okay." And it is. "You'll find it." What it is is entirely unknown but it carries the weight or something hidden and sweet with just a hint of bitterness that you harbor deep down somewhere where nobody can see.

People don't tell stories about overcoming obstacles with a not-person, because they don't count. Their story was never quite bad enough to everybody else to warrant somthing besides careful apathy; that if they couldn't see the signs they weren't there and a broken brain doesn't equal a broken body and really you shouldn't complain because you're safe and that's all that matters. Like the girl who went to sleep happy and right and peaceful and came back with something gone, something missing and not quite there and hiding that you can see but not touch. But you're trapped inside your own head even as you carefully coax Lydia out of her's, tugging on all the loose ends and hoping that she won't unravel before you can fix her like she always does (she isn't broken, she just needs some mending).