Damnatio Memoriae :: [Calliope + Galaxy]
Mar 21, 2014 0:21:54 GMT -5
Post by L△LIA on Mar 21, 2014 0:21:54 GMT -5
If she stopped to think about it, she wouldn't be able to remember the last time she wore a dress. Months, certainly, or even even years — maybe not since she tugged an old white sundress over her head after dying it black in her kitchen sink, bawling into the inky water as she tried to convince herself that her favorite brother hadn't really died. She had outgrown the funeral dress she wore as a child to her mother's ceremony and buying something new for the occasion sounded like masochism, whereas the act of drowning her fists and fabric the color of innocence in a dark, homemade ocean felt almost cathartic. That murdered sundress, however, is not the one she wears today.
Maybe she has worn old dresses on laundry days now and then, when both her own closet and Aesop's are barren of alternative options, but today three clean pairs of jeans were dismissed in favor of the faded floral garment she wears now. Before she fell into habits of self-neglect, Calliope Bloom was the kind of girl who audibly squealed and bit her lip over frilly skirts in shop windows and took pride in managing to wear her hair in a different style every single day for a month without repetition — pigtails, braids, bows, headbands, zigzag parts, or anything else that seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, the same cannot be said. The rumpled, frizzy knot she has wrangled the dark strands into seems anything but carefully thought out and even the dress has an accidental feel to it, one of Aesop's old denim button-up shirts layered over it, with the sleeves haphazardly rolled up. If she were asked why today, she would simply shrug and mutter no reason in reply. It is a coincidence, perhaps, that she ran into an old school crush in the hospital lobby one day and that the unexpected hem of springtime fabric swirls around her knees when she returns the next. This curious incident of floral is either a pattern of rebirth or highly debatable happenstance.
Regardless of what her subconscious had in mind, she can't deny that she feels more like a girl today than when she slums around in sweatpants and ratty old tee shirts, giving dirty glares to anyone with enough guts to side-glance her for it. Working three jobs, cursing at a comatose brother, and still nursing a grief-stricken anger streak after all this time, she would have forgotten to bother with her appearance even if she hadn't sworn off lipgloss as an illogical, but still satisfying way of rebelling against the world. She doesn't want to look pretty when she still feels so ugly and, besides, when she goes around done-down like a homeless vagabond, she's convinced she resembles Aesop more than ever before. Despite the insistent echoes of that sentiment, when she passes a mirrored pane of glass while walking down the hall, she almost trips over her own feet while stopping to blink at the reflection. Motivation versus coincidence doesn't matter for the moment as she reaches out to press a finger against the ghost of her own cheek.
Yes, Calliope, that's you. Even someone with slightly impaired vision might be able to see that today.
Nostalgia might inhabit her were it not for a flare of silent guilt or maybe just a ridiculously stubborn sense of persistence for the hazardous path she has been walking for so long, as if it's already far too late to ever turn back now. Still, when she rounds the corner and steps into her brother's room, for the first time in just as long, her first words to him aren't a curse. "G'morning, Napoleon —" She plops into the chair by his bed. "— you useless bastard." Emphasis on first words. This too is the kind of progress someone might need to squint to see, but whatever evidence of sentiment lingered in the air rewinds into her lungs as she gasps at the face staring back at her. The unconscious boy in the bed doesn't so much as twitch at the greeting (and wouldn't give it a second thought were he awake), but the expression of the unexpected girl standing at his other side does.
Now and again, there are people who belong so absolutely to certain places and times in life that just seeing them is a step into a world of yesterdays. Most of the time they are few and far between; others come all at once, as if knowing they are needed. Maybe everything truly is happenstance, or perhaps —
"Galaxy?" One of Calliope's hands quietly fidgets with a wrinkle in her dress as the other tucks a few wayward strands of hair behind her ear, almost as if she were self-conscious.
— perhaps there's no such thing as coincidence. Simply because something hasn't been remembered, doesn't mean it has been forgotten.
Maybe she has worn old dresses on laundry days now and then, when both her own closet and Aesop's are barren of alternative options, but today three clean pairs of jeans were dismissed in favor of the faded floral garment she wears now. Before she fell into habits of self-neglect, Calliope Bloom was the kind of girl who audibly squealed and bit her lip over frilly skirts in shop windows and took pride in managing to wear her hair in a different style every single day for a month without repetition — pigtails, braids, bows, headbands, zigzag parts, or anything else that seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, the same cannot be said. The rumpled, frizzy knot she has wrangled the dark strands into seems anything but carefully thought out and even the dress has an accidental feel to it, one of Aesop's old denim button-up shirts layered over it, with the sleeves haphazardly rolled up. If she were asked why today, she would simply shrug and mutter no reason in reply. It is a coincidence, perhaps, that she ran into an old school crush in the hospital lobby one day and that the unexpected hem of springtime fabric swirls around her knees when she returns the next. This curious incident of floral is either a pattern of rebirth or highly debatable happenstance.
Regardless of what her subconscious had in mind, she can't deny that she feels more like a girl today than when she slums around in sweatpants and ratty old tee shirts, giving dirty glares to anyone with enough guts to side-glance her for it. Working three jobs, cursing at a comatose brother, and still nursing a grief-stricken anger streak after all this time, she would have forgotten to bother with her appearance even if she hadn't sworn off lipgloss as an illogical, but still satisfying way of rebelling against the world. She doesn't want to look pretty when she still feels so ugly and, besides, when she goes around done-down like a homeless vagabond, she's convinced she resembles Aesop more than ever before. Despite the insistent echoes of that sentiment, when she passes a mirrored pane of glass while walking down the hall, she almost trips over her own feet while stopping to blink at the reflection. Motivation versus coincidence doesn't matter for the moment as she reaches out to press a finger against the ghost of her own cheek.
Yes, Calliope, that's you. Even someone with slightly impaired vision might be able to see that today.
Nostalgia might inhabit her were it not for a flare of silent guilt or maybe just a ridiculously stubborn sense of persistence for the hazardous path she has been walking for so long, as if it's already far too late to ever turn back now. Still, when she rounds the corner and steps into her brother's room, for the first time in just as long, her first words to him aren't a curse. "G'morning, Napoleon —" She plops into the chair by his bed. "— you useless bastard." Emphasis on first words. This too is the kind of progress someone might need to squint to see, but whatever evidence of sentiment lingered in the air rewinds into her lungs as she gasps at the face staring back at her. The unconscious boy in the bed doesn't so much as twitch at the greeting (and wouldn't give it a second thought were he awake), but the expression of the unexpected girl standing at his other side does.
Now and again, there are people who belong so absolutely to certain places and times in life that just seeing them is a step into a world of yesterdays. Most of the time they are few and far between; others come all at once, as if knowing they are needed. Maybe everything truly is happenstance, or perhaps —
"Galaxy?" One of Calliope's hands quietly fidgets with a wrinkle in her dress as the other tucks a few wayward strands of hair behind her ear, almost as if she were self-conscious.
— perhaps there's no such thing as coincidence. Simply because something hasn't been remembered, doesn't mean it has been forgotten.
