demetria erwin {three} finished

"you've got a warm heart,
you've got a beautiful brain."
- daughter, medicine.

The door creaks open with a burst of golden light and I greet them with a smile brighter than the sun.

"Oh why hello there! My name is Demetria, spelt with two E's, and welcome to my home!" I beam, curtsying in my little dress. Shiny black shoes point perfectly, just as I'd practised, towards our visitor. Excitement explodes over my tongue and falls to the floor in delighted giggles, but before I have time to usher them in, sit them down and offer them a cup of tea my Mother pats me on the head and says "I'm ever so sorry, she can be quite-"

"Eccentric?" says the man, taken aback at my presence but none-the-less amused. "Why, it's not a problem at all." He bends down to my level, placing his suitcase beside him on the porch, gives me a wink and says "The best kinds of people are whimsical, exciting, utterly irregular. Don't you think?"

Like magic, he pulls a lollipop from thin air and places it in my hands. I decide then and there at 9 years of age that I rather like this fellow. It stains my tongue green and only speeds up the sound of dancing shoes clacking away at the wooden floors in my own excited, frenzied transport, but I don't mind because green was - and still is - my favourite colour and I quite like it as the sounds bounce through the halls and affirm my solid, noise-making existence in the world.

I'm glad he stuck around. He being Percival. ("But you can call me Percy" he said as he shook my little hand and bowed, like I was the most important person in the entire world.) Percy was originally supposed to help Mom with paperwork and business things but he'd pop around with more and more lollipops and less and less paperwork. He was charming and fun and took me out for cupcakes and let me lick the icing off of my fingers. We read stories together and I'd dance on the table in my best dress to his favourite songs, pigtails flying as I spun around and around and perfected every move. When Mom asked what I thought of moving in with him I thought I was the luckiest girl alive, but really I think my Mom was happier than I. As much as she loved me I pulled her down, caused struggle to rest upon her shoulders and lines of worry to carve away at such a young face. Percy took that weight from her and gave us a new life, a new future, a new purpose. He brought her happiness where, try as I might, I could not.

Since then, we've moved from a tiny little apartment to a nice house where I can dance and run and be to my heart's content. I'm a little taller, a little older, a little wiser. Percy's starting to get grey hairs and crinkles in his eyes, and Mom hasn't stopped smiling since she met him. I never saw her truly happy before he showed up. Just a facade to keep my spirits high. Perhaps that's why I'm so good at being happy - I never saw her cry, not once. Absorbed into my skin were smiles and pick-me-up's and positive thinking. It rushes out of me just as quickly as it did my Mother, although I'm not forcing it to please others. I'm just being me.

It's a little ironic, how I am. Because I was created out of wedlock and born into heartbreak, my father passing before he could say goodbye. Sometimes I think about him and feel sad, but I've got his tiny little pocket watch around my neck to hold when he crosses my mind. "He said he'd smash it when he knew he was about to die. That way you'd always know exactly what time he left this Earth and began his wait" Mom said. "What's he waiting for?" I asked, peering at the cracked little thing with it's hands pointing at 26 and 1. A kiss on my forehead followed the quiet, croaky "You" and nothing more was spoken.

I've been told I have his eyes and ears and passion for things (although I don't think he had a hairbrush collection and religiously kept his shoes shiny). My clothes are neat and tidy and just the way I like them, folded in order of colours above all the pairs of shoes in my closet. Before Percy would reassure my Mom that I was just neat and ordinary and perfectly fine she'd scooped me off to the doctors to have me tested, convinced there was something wrong with me. I itched to put the colour pencils in a rainbow, my fingers tingling to keep all the shapes in the right piles and showed them my dancing I'd practised for hours and hours. My olive limbs would fly around the room and I'd smile with gaps in my teeth, and they told her time and time again that I was fine, just organised and liked to be right about things. I tapped my foot and snapped a "I told you so!", and they all smiled and patted my head.

So his little watch sits above my heart that pumps his blood through my body and I dance to its content. I breathe enthusiasm and take unkind words to heart. A teacher once said my personality was made for the Capitol, but I frowned and disagreed. Perhaps that's why the kids at school never seemed to warm up to me as much as I did to them. My eagerness got the better of me and I turned horribly overbearing.

Thus I spent the rest of my days with just me and my Mom baking and laughing and cheering each-other up on the days when she wasn't working her hands to the bone to keep us alive, and when Percy arrived he taught me things about industry and business and planning and management. Potential, I discovered, is rooted deep within me. Gravity pushes against my body and keeps me firmly planted on the earth, caught in the rush of reality and work. Questions about Panem and justice and how my Mother could love me so much yet still walk me to reaping day with sombre hope on her face left my young mind, and I filled it up with figures and patterns instead to lift my burden of just being me from her shoulders. Insecurity likes to claw at me every now and again, but I've learnt that there is nothing more dangerous in this world than being hollow, floating up through the sky - or shallow, sinking to the depths of the ocean floor. I taught myself that, after years of observing how others reacted to my best intentions and the harsh whispers that scratched at my insides, trying oh-so desperately to be the balance in-between.

My father's hands pointed to 1 and 26. My mothers to hope and myself. Percy's, to teachings and compassion. Mine point to the future, endless and open to opportunity. I hope that one day, in my future, my hands will grasp confidence in myself with ease and clutch at my youth, never letting go.

In time, I will learn.

"time is never time at all
you can never ever leave
without leaving a piece of youth."
- smashing pumpkins, tonight tonight.