home is [wherever] i'm with you {south/riley}
Sept 29, 2012 20:12:37 GMT -5
Post by ✨ zozo. on Sept 29, 2012 20:12:37 GMT -5
[/color]Let me go awayWake me in the morning
Gonna wake me up at night
Ain't got no use for sleeping anymore
Ain't got enough time
For myselfI used to love exploring. New places, new people, new faces, new experiences. Wandering through forests, rivers, crowds and streets. It was all so promising, so alive. But promises of living and breathing and talking and laughing and all other signs that I am alive mean nothing now. Promises of staying alive are stupid. Are meaningless. They are just waiting to be broken. Trust me, I'd know. But I keep myself moving, through this too big, too empty house. You could fill the place from floor to ceiling with people, and it would still carry this eerie sense of abandonment, of all hope lost. As if we're not all here, really - just remnants of former selves that drift through rooms like the cool breeze that escapes through ajar windows that nobody remembers to close. The stairwell creaks, straining under the weight of my footsteps that carry far more than just my body and bones. Perhaps, one day, the burdens that every soul in this house carries will become too great a weight to carry, and it shall come crashing down in plaster and splinters and broken barristers. Maybe we'd all wake up and realise that life still goes on with or without absences that make the heart grow anything but fonder.
I don't remember discarding my shoes - then again, I don't remember putting any on - but remembering little details in my life has become excruciatingly hard when my mind is stuck in the past. So my bare feet patter up the stairs, climbing the unfamiliar mountain of polished wooden planks and perfectly painted walls. These stairs tell a thousand stories of a family that once lived so contently together, each member an element to a system that played out just fine until the Capitol reached in and stole one away, leaving the others to sit frantically desperate with no purpose any more. And I am supposed to replace her, replace Avon Lightwood, the element that seems to have kept the rest running like clockwork. I don't want to replace her. I don't have the right. And why should they accept me into their home, have me weasel my way into a corner of my own and cope with me, just because their mother couldn't cope without her lost daughter? They shouldn't. I wouldn't want anyone to replace Eli. I don't want anyone to replace Eli. He will always be my brother, as Avon will always be their sister. Perhaps we cannot take each other's places as the missing cogs in our lives, but instead become new pieces to help ourselves function like we used to, slowly adjusting to our new parts as we tick, tick, tick onwards.
My eyes feast upon the architecture of the second floor. Corridors of doors that lead into rooms my memory has yet to get adjusted to line the walls. My room lies somewhere down there, with a bed and a suitcase and a window and blank white walls that seem to stretch for miles and miles. I'd like to scrawl lyrics for a song I've been trying to conjure up in my head all over the walls in marker pen, but I have been trying to be on my best behaviour. Perhaps that would fill the gaps in my brain, the empty space that contains teasing, taunting horrors that I would rather not face just yet. With each step past closed doors I trace a map in my head, marking out where everything is. I think Ipastpassed Avon's room once, a few days ago, but I dare not try to disturb her memory. Silence follows me - as it always does. Maybe as I settle down here, I might find that I catch myself humming every once in a while. Then slowly, creeping into whistling, into one-word answers, into sentences and, if I'm lucky, laughter. I'd say singing too, but I don't push my luck any more.
I used to chase visions of my future, full of laughter and music and family. Nobody that full of hope expects to end up hollow and endlessly empty. Not knowing how you function, how your chest heaves up and down and up and down, how you fall asleep and wake up again without the person who swore they'd never leave. It is so hard to remember that it was not his fault, that it was his disease that sucked him dry. That I should have, would have, could have done more. But all the facts and figures, all science and faith in the entire world cannot change things. Cannot turn back the clock and write out the future the way I want it to end. Cannot bring someone back. And that is so, so utterly hard to accept.
But open doors that bleed light and fragments of it's rooms contents switch my thoughts back to attentiveness, back to reality. And it is not the reality of living, breathing, being without someone that I try my best to avoid. It is the reality of life slowly moving, changing and developing and playing out the rest of it's song. Curiosity killed the cat, but death isn't something I'd want to avoid. Pushing the door open - slowly, to avoid tell tale creaks from word hinges - I step into the room. A bed sits next to drawers, a wardrobe, clothes hung over chairs and on the floor as if no-one has bothered to tend to the room in months. But it is not the room's contents that I am so drawn to. It's the wall's.
Splinters and tuners and concrete floors. Screaming and shouting and snapping strings. Anger and guilt and wishing I could take it all back. Clutching shards of wood and metal and scraping knees as I try to fix it, placing the broken pieces back together again with shaking hands. A guitar hangs from a wall stand, dust collecting on it's neck, settling in between the strings. Instinctively, I move forward. I haven't seen one of these in days, weeks, months. Haven't heard one playing, haven't touched one, haven't played one myself. Laughter and a G, Cm, F Sharp, applause. I can point out where each of my fingertips should go to play each chord, pulling out the memory bank in my head as I rustle through it's folders. I ache to play again, but I remember that I'm not supposed to be snooping around here, disturbing privacy and memories and my emotional stability. Careful, I am reminded as I reach out to touch the strings, the skin on my hands hovering over the metal wires. You'll have no where else to go if you break another one of these. Lyrics pour from my mind and point themselves out to chords against the neck of the instrument, whispering to be played, to be constructed. To write a song for him.
His guitar pick still hasn't left my hand.
Away from where we’ve grown
I did wandering through foreign family homes
And I had never have cared
To be alone
{ooc; ermahgerd word vomit, sorry about this </3}[/color][/center]
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