and drift away {cass}

A fallen star,
Fell from your heart,
And landed in my eyes,
I screamed aloud,
As it tore through them,

There is nothing easy about living your life alone. There is nothing easy about taking care of yourself and always, always pulling yourself back up after you have fallen. Every time I slip or fall or make a mistake I’m left to pick up the pieces and pull myself off the ground, dust myself off and go on. There is never a simple question of if I am alright. There is never a lingering thought that I might be hurt or that big what if? Because what if I were to simply stay down where I had fallen and not drag myself back up and onto my feet. I would never have to again face a nightmare. And maybe those permanent rings beneath my eyes would become something less, more soft and welcoming. And that haunting sadness that so desperately clings to my gaze would faze oh and they would be there. I can see them right now looking at me, just as I see their hollow, empty eyes in my nightmares. Dead. Just as dead as the day I found them. Sometimes, to my growing horror the faces change and sometimes they stay the same, for some odd reason I find so much more comfort in the thought of seeing my parents face then seeing Simon’s. Seeing his face makes me wake up sobbing, and screaming all at once. He wasn’t dead. He was not dead at all. He was alive and my parents were dead and it was an odd thing to see those thoughts clash together to give me some clueless idea that he might follow down the same path and then I would be lonely once more. Ten more years of nothing, I couldn’t survive that.

I remember once when father had taken me out for the day. We’d walked for what seemed forever before we came to the edge of the district. We stood there for Ripred knows how long, gazing at the fence that prevented us from leaving. He’d taken me once before, he told me that, that fence kept us inside, but he said that even though it prevented us from having a normal life, and that even though in a few years’ time I would have to face a horror he had once faced he told me that fence kept us all together. He promised me on that day that he would hold my hand on the reaping, that every year to come mama would take one of mine and he would hold the other and as long as we held each other they would never take me, because he believed that. And when he said it I believed him too. I suppose it wasn’t his fault that the promise broke. I’ll always remember it, attending my first reaping, forcefully holding back those tears and just waiting for them to call out my name, because dad wasn’t there and if he wasn’t there, there would be no one to catch me when I fell so I had no one to stop me from tumbling forwards. But the words never came.

I’d barely survived those ten years without them. I’d spent days at a time struggling with the idea of just giving in. But I never did, sometimes I question myself, demanding to know an answer. Why bother, why keep going when I can simply slip past those awful nightmares that want to destroy my life, where I don’t see the blood on my hands the bodies of my parents and the man I killed. I had only been seven. He had killed my parent’s right in front of me, although he had not known I was there. And now every night I relived that horror and some nights it turned into me jabbing and stabbing at the lifeless forms of my parents. The blood smearing my mother’s beautiful face and that warm, carefree smile would fade, to be stuck to the front of my mind. And my dad’s eyes, oh the horror in them, it was as if he could see it, as though he was watching me kill him. I miss them. I miss them so much. I miss them when they hold me, and the way dad use to pick me up and swing me in his arms. I miss feeling them hug me and hold me and whisper how much they loved me in my ear. I need that, you know? I need someone to tell me they love me because I haven’t heard those words for ten years and now I’m not sure if anyone ever could. Now I’m not sure if I could ever say those words, they don’t feel right.

”I-I love… Love-Lo-“ The air was cold and crisp and it seemed to tug the words from my mouth before I could finish saying them. So I bit them back, refusing to open my pale pink lips to let them fall out. They weren’t the words of a murder; no those were the words that good people said, not bad. The ground beneath my feet is refreshing as always. The dirt clings to my skin, as always I walk down each row of the orchard bare foot. It was habit. To feel the world and all its sorrows you needed to experience it first-hand. The only way to do so was to walk it as you were supposed to, bare foot. The Earth couldn’t be experienced with shoes in the way; there was no pain in walking on rocks, or feeling the sting of a bee. There was no use in walking on grass if you did not know what it felt like and all you did was look at it. No one seemed to understand that though. And I might be dying on the inside, and I might be filled with hollow sadness and hold no heart within my chest, but I wanted to exist. It was how I learnt why I never did end it all, why I chose to not take the simple way out and kill myself, because the very idea of existence was not something I wanted to waste. As pathetic as it was I needed to feel that pain, because maybe I was stopping some other person from feeling it as well. There can only be one life like my own. I am only one person, so I will live it in the hopes no one will feel the pain that I do. No one deserves it.

Sighing heavily I move down the next row of apple trees. I did this every day. I spent every day within the confines of the awkward, these tree offered a sort of protection that I had never felt before until Simon put his arms around me. It was why I trusted him so much. It was why I cared about him so much. He made me feel safe. My head snaps up at the all to familiar and unwelcome sound of shoes on ground. I look towards the far end, past the bright greenery of the orchard and towards the figure of what seemed to be a young girl, my age or a bit older. I couldn't tell. She looked awfully happy. Scrambling to my feet I turned to face her, from a simple glance I could tell she was not an orphan kid. No she was not from Julia Orchard. "Who are you?" I ask, my tone cool, neither welcoming nor friendly. But then that was nothing different I had little reason to offer happiness to anyone.

And I was in the darkness,
So darkness I became,
The stars, the moon,
They have all been blown out,
You left me in the dark

A fallen star,
Fell from your heart,
And landed in my eyes,
I screamed aloud,
As it tore through them,

”"I used to come here. A long time ago"

I wonder what it is like to have a family. It has been too long since I last saw one, longer since I had been a part of one. Sometimes the kids trapped within those walls with me will call us their family. They are usually down trodden, depressed kids that have a touch of spirit that has not been stolen from them yet. But in the end it always goes. I came with none, but others do. And some of those still young, early ones will turn around and hope that the older girls and boys, the younger children and deranged ones will act something like the family they had once had. Siblings stick right with each other and rarely venture away from the comfort of familiar sides. Whilst the single children that slowly trickle in are left to build a new home, family and existence for themselves. I’ve never tried to help them. Not many of us do, one or two unbroken birds will cling to the new comers, hoping that it will just make it all better, but the rest of us are just too far gone. I guess I see it as more of a hopeless cause.

We all will end up the same one day. Dead. And before that maybe something will happen in between, something to give purpose in a life tumbling at full speed towards that inevitable end. Some leave and get that time with others, some stay, some die in these very walls, most of those take their own lives and some just get sick and sleep and never wake up. There is always tragedy and I’ve come to notice that there is more pain and suffering in this home then there is joy. You don’t see a happy orphan that much and the ones that are happy usually get bagged up and taken away before we can truly digest it. Adults willing to adopt just love those kinds of kids and maybe if we all just realised that sad little trend we’d be out of here. Maybe most of us have. Maybe most of us just don’t want to leave. I don’t. I can’t leave and will never leave, when I’m older I’ll walk away from here, but I’ll be stuck. I’ll always come back, because I’m too far lost and gone, I’m too sad and depressing to not stay. I don’t want a new family. I just want my own back. I just want to hear mama and dad argue over who is taking me to work for the day.

I want to hear dad laugh and see mama smile. And hear them read a story to me or feel their arms wrap around me as they chase me through the house and as I squeal before being playfully dragged to bed, where they’ll both hug me and kiss me and tell me they love me. And I’d always fall asleep with a smile on my lips. In the end that is all I want and I’ll never have that again so I see no point in searching for it or trying to recreate it. I’ll just suffer instead. I mean I remember them, I remember their faces, sometimes as flickering, scattered images and other times, like in my nightmares, as clear as though they were staring at me right now. They haunted me and sometimes I’d ponder the idea that they were trying to question me and tell me that they still cared and that the fact that I had killed did not matter to them. But I knew better. Killing was a sin and it was not something even my long lost parents could forgive. No, the sin would stay with me forever, no matter what I did. I look once more back at the girl in front of me. She was pretty enough.

And she did not hold that air of sadness that most orphans did. I frown, throwing her a suspicious look, if she had been here before I would know her; after all I had been in the orphanage for over ten years. But I shrug it off, maybe I was taking what she was saying into the wrong context or maybe she was just lying. It was not a very good topic to lie about if she was. Having no parents and no one, really, was not a joke. But I would not make assumptions. "I'm here to buy some apples." I nod my head. There were a lot of apples her. This was an orchard. I worked her from time to time, but most of the wardens at the orphanage tended to hand out the work to the others and whenever they dished the work out to me I’d always slid away from it or dis it out to another person. I liked doing the work when I wanted to, but other than that I preferred to stay amongst the trees simply walking and staring at them, avoiding my own thoughts and instead trying to fill my mind with the world around me.

”Well there are plenty of apples here. It is an orchard.” I tried not to sound too sarcastic. Normally I was not so rude, but I just felt so edgy today. “So, what did you need the apples for?” I finish lamely.

And I was in the darkness,
So darkness I became,
The stars, the moon,
They have all been blown out,
You left me in the dark