the place that she left // sycamore, blitz

Did you know that paper can't be folded in half more than seven times?

Trust me. I've tried. Hours spent huddled over a worn table, folded sheets of paper littered at my feet - I spent my childhood in a naive daze, believing in urban myths and foolish enough to believe that I could break them. Years pass, though, and those sheets of paper were burned in fires that couldn't warm me. My fingers ached with the stretch of my knuckles and the once buoyant smile on my lips grew paper thin. No. Paper can not be folded in half more than seven times.

Humans, however, are unfortunately not paper.

1. A woman leaves a baby on the front steps of a house filled with creaking floorboards and water stained walls. The night is sticky with rain and the baby cries until morning.

2. People come and go through the front door that promises a new life with kindled fires and soft beds and kisses on the forehead. The boy's head dances with the sensation of leaving the home that cradles him with dark hallways and empty bedrooms. So, he sits. And he waits. He waits and he waits and he waits and he spends most of his childhood waiting for things never to come.

3. The old lady goes mad and scares him off to his room. He hides in his closet and damns himself for crying tears that no one will ever see but him. The lunatic laughs all night as he nestles himself in a bed made of itchy scarves and moth-eaten sweaters on his closet floor. No one is there to hear him cry, so the next morning, he goes on as if he didn't.

4. She is a doorstep baby, too. The only one ever - since him, anyway. The crazy old woman carries the baby with trembling arms, like some subconscious part of her underneath all that crazy already knows that she won't be able to handle these many kids, and there's an itchy feeling in the boy's chest that he isn't used to. "Let me hold her," he asks, a curious little boy with stubby arms outstretched to see what it feels like to hold something more fragile than him close to his chest. The old hag makes a scrunched up face, but then makes him sit down and places the baby in his arms. "What's her name?" He asks. She feels like sunlight. "Laila."

5. His first fist fight is in an alleyway with a boy who is missing a tooth and who is much bigger than him. It is daytime, so bright the boy has to squint his eyes to see the other boy's face, and beads of sweat are collecting at the nape of his neck (from the heat or from anxiety, the boy cannot tell). He holds his fists in front of him like a question mark, unsure of every awkward step and punch he tries to throw. He walks home with purple and red on his face and chest, shoulders drooping and feet dragging across the dirt path. Laila gives him a kiss on the cheek when he crosses the threshold, and he smiles. A genuine smile. It hurts his heart to think that a bloodied pulp of a boy could love so much as he did.

6. More people come through the door, except, this time, they are all here to stay. He watches from afar, wry, and detached, as the hope lights in their eyes. He watches as it slowly burns away. He wants to laugh at them, pity them, damn them for being as stupid as he once was. Except, all he does feel is sorry.

7. "Laila Sycamore!" That night, he goes home without her for the first time. He has a strange feeling it won't be the last, either.

I wish I was paper. I wish it stopped there. There should be a limit to how many times my spine and my smile and my spirit is cracked in half. Seven should've been enough.

Arwen screams for Lilith and me downstairs. I hear Silas shout something, and then there is silence.

Oh, god, the silence is worse than his screams. The silence leaves me alone with the shit storm that the thoughts in my head kicked up. I wish I could drain my mind from the numbing reminder of her absence, but it settles within me, and refuses to budge.

8. She dies. It is not beautiful. It is not heroic. It is not anything to the boy but expected. Every last bit of him inside cracks and shatters and folds over. He does not cry, however. He does not speak, he does not scream, he does not punch walls or boys that are bigger than him. Instead, he goes to his room, and he shuts the door.

He does not come out.