so i can feel something. {ella}

“YOU SAY I RESEMBLE A FLOWER; I PARTLY AGREE; MY BRAIN IS GOVERNED BY BLACK PETALS OF BURNT DAISIES.”

— anne sexton

The measure of time varies within different minds, and while the dreamers with flower crowns atop their heads draw a tally after another with every sunset they see, you count your existence with every time they say, "you have everything." Perhaps you do; you have vases and paintings and objects that has seen revolutions and textbook references before they were immortalized in paper. They litter your home - but that is an exaggeration. You look into a mirror, framed in gold, and you belong with your extravagant background. You look into a mirror and you don't see yourself, but rather a painting, and negative space swells all around you until breathing becomes difficult. You don't live in a home; you live in a mausoleum.

Your knuckles whiten as your grip on your dressing table tightens. A face free of red lipstick and no more painted-on shadows lingering by your eyes, a few blemishes showing themselves and bumps if you look up close. You used to be fond of your reflection - you were beautiful, after all, but past the walls you surround yourself your mind is muddled, a quicksand of its own. Reality is harsh in a way that you are grateful. The hard lines soften but not to the point that they melt into kaleidescopic colors, and every rough surface you run your palm along triggers a half-smile. You may be lost, but you're not completely gone.

Those little pills pack a punch, but common sense can be persistent. You could just take a bottle and dump them all down your throat at once, you could. If only the impending aftermath didn't involve your writhing body under the harsh light of your bathroom lights, the medics forcing a tube down your stomach in an attempt you revive your death-kissed body. You often wonder how you've come to this, the glaring awareness of your own deterioration as you stand in the sideline, but certain things are like quicksand: once you've stepped in, you won't be able to get out. Some would immediately associate sinking to a stone, but you compare it as to how a feather falls to the ground - slowly, a bit tedious, but a hopeless case when too-eager hands try to catch it and it swerves right out of their grasp. The trick is to lay your palm open in patient stillness.

"There you are."

Hallucinations of your image cracking like the ground during a hateful summer heat disappears, and you rise and turn towards your door. There are times when your mind plays tug-of-war with you, but it cooperates for now, and you recognize the familiar voice before you even see him. He's constant, and hiis voice makes you remember you haven't burnt back to ashes; at least, not yet.

"I thought I'd be lost in this place forever."

I thought, too. Immaculate can be suffocating, and in the false sense of 'real' wealth tends to create, you are grateful for his smile, and perhaps everything of him, that anchors you back on land and you smile back. You walk out of your room and turn to him, and the hallway is no better but it's certainly more than simply four walls around you. "So, where to?"

( OOC - HI I'M SORRY ILY <333 )

There are times when you wish for nothing, content to float around in your own consciousness and drifting off in false sleep, walking with ghost footsteps in reality while you’re off dancing in your own version of real. The walls have broken down from the blessed white to a kaleidoscopic myriad of all the colors you know, and you would’ve been smiling and handing out everyone the pocket-sized happiness you’ve come to make a refuge of, if you weren’t so stone-cold and lips set in a tight line that says ‘do not cross’ more effectively than the invisible yellow tape surrounding your home. (For what you call to be the house of forgiveness looks so far away from the slum streets that need mercy the most, from the broken souls left to lose themselves even more in vices – until you realize that you are one of them.)

Then, there are times when you wish for everything, like a black hole or quicksand. There is the saying that the brightest light casts the darkest shadows, and you don’t know if that meant for you or for Savannah or Mara. Savannah, who bathes and suffocates herself in glitter and everything beautiful to lure the unknowing prey, letting them walk willingly into her palm only to crush while a smile – frightening, devious, dangerous, unsatisfied – plays on her lips. Or Mara, because you never know, even with the purity that dangles off her fingertips and taints every surface that she touches, it’s a constant struggle between wanting to pry the brightbright light and letting it stay there for a little more while, or up until it sinks into her skin and whatever darkness she had will be wiped away in a rush of white.

Then there’s you.

You’re the walls that line infirmaries, the white fabric they wear to give the dying a glimpse of what might awaits them, but it’s a trick when they’re both seeing the clouds and hot white fire. You’re an image, a post-up sign and like the carved statues that they all pray to and nothing but hollow concrete on the inside, the smell of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol and the light glinting off medical scissors.

You close your eyes and sometime later it sleep swallows you, and you’re not even sure if it’s a dream or a nightmare when it’s the same thing again and again that you’ve decided it’s not a dream or a nightmare, but the third kind of reality you’ve found for yourself. It’s not comforting at all, the shadows that reach out to grab you but there’s comfort in screaming when you can’t, never when you’re awake.

But if you could dream. You would see your lungs inflate from excess, taking life off the extravagant pieces gilded in gold and keeping for yourself the time and space they’ve caged in between the frames and painting surfaces. You’d walk through your home and leave brittle, cracked things in your wake, the trail of dust blowing behind you and licking the soles of your feet. Then you would run. Run hard and fast, faster than you’ve ever done, run through topiaries that would wither and limp as you go, the mowed grass stamped with brown footsteps. You find yourself running through the forest and they don’t show signs of wearing down, and you look back to see your home and your gardens now a desolate ruin. (Home is where the heart is, so you’ve got to find your heart.)

He offers you his hand, and you can’t help but smile again, happiness brimming over the corners of your lips that it’s undeniable that within this home, he and this is the only thing left with worth at all. “Alright.” You take his hand, wrapping your fingers around his own – you don’t want to lose him – and you don’t have to warn him to run, not when you feel your feet moving to its own accord before you register it, and you’re running along with him through hallways that go on forever and you dream of younger days when he had no scruff and you wore white dresses. You remember the sun’s warmth against your skin as you each other and end up lying on the ground with the grass tickling your ears and eyes towards the sky, watching the stories clouds tell to whoever is willing to stop and watch. You crave for those moments, and now finally broken free. For now.

“Remember when we used to do this? When we run around and we’d get so tired after we’d eat – oh! Let’s get ice cream!” You don’t feel hungry, not at all, but there’s something about being out that makes you want to do and crave everything all at once.