{at the top of the hill} ruth, standalone.

They took him.

In reality, he had been stolen many days before, and yet now, it almost seemed fruitless to keep the hope alive that he would come home.

They had tied ropes to his body and bandages to his feet which made him bound to them under the same ties that bound him to the arena, bound him to attack, harm and kill.

Except that wasn’t the truth. The look in Blaire’s eyes over the course of the past four days had been a constant reminder that he didn’t want to be in there like the bigger, stronger, faster tributes had trained for. He did not deserve to be there. He was not a killer.

And even though he would never admit it, he wanted to come home.

When the cameras pan to him lying on the ground each night tied with ropes that hold his breaking body together and he is holding Laila’s boomerang tightly to his chest, it is like a lifeline that connects him to home from a thousand miles away. I’ve lost track of the number of times I have read and reread my own token – a poem whose words are engraved into my skull – and whilst a yellowed piece of paper might not mean much to anyone else, to me, it is everything.

Stroke by stroke, tear by tear.

It’s funny, in a way, how we attach ourselves to items that are seemingly useless. Things we would forget about in a heartbeat if it wasn’t for the emotions tied to them, decorated with memories, both good and bad. We preserve a part of ourselves in these keepsakes, vowing to never let go of them, hoping we will never be forced to forget. Sometimes, however, we aren’t so lucky. Perhaps that is why we spend so long trying to find who we are.

Despite the knowledge that the projected embodiment of Blaire slashing at the darkness and running into the night – post severed-foot, of course (the thought makes my stomach twist and turn in knots, the memory of red liquid spilling to the ground on permanent replay in my mind, and how it wasn’t yellow, the colour of Blaire) – was not my twin, the brother I knew and looked up to and felt safer with, the truth was that when I looked at the television screen, sitting alone long after the other residents of Sycamore had retired for the day, surrounded in the darkness of night which mirrored not only the suffocating blackness of the arena, but also of my own soul, I did not recognise the monster I saw there.

An accomplice to Death, all the while avoiding the slashing nature of His scythe that had taken twelve lives already. Twelve lives already. I can only pray Blaire is not thirteen, and that I am not fourteen.

I am fifteen.

Fifteen years ago, we had been born.

Fifteen years ago, we had lost two parents all at once.

Fifteen years ago, we were alone.

And today, we are still alone.

Without Blaire, I feel weightless, and that is not good. When you are weightless, you are no longer grounded, and when you are no longer grounded you can almost feel yourself floating away, being taken by the forces of gravity and it doesn’t matter how hard you search for something to pull you back down because it is inevitable that you are just as lost as the stars that smile sadly at night and the clouds that drift in when the storms we fear most come crashing through the doors.

But life would go on without you. After you have ascended into the heavens, people forget, which is the saddest truth of all.

This morning, the sun had cast its fiery smile over the wilting lavender and lace-like thistle that grew copiously beyond the windows of broken glass I looked out of every morning. The jagged pieces of crystalline shards toss slivers of rainbows around my room when the rising sun catches them at the right angle, but today, I did not see the colour show.

Instead, I saw my world come crashing to the ground – once and for all – despite the promise that the 8am sun brought. The promise of a beautiful day.

We needed more of those kinds of days.

But promises are made to be broken, and swords are crafted to kill just as tributes are crafted to die.

It doesn’t hurt any less when Blaire is attacked.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again and again and again.

The rational part of my mind insists that when he lashes out at the others, it is simply out of self-defence. He needed to survive. Surviving meant killing. Killing meant attacking. He didn’t want to hurt them, but he had to. That was all it was. Yes. And yet the glint in his eyes terrifies me, for he looks so much like father had when he carried his whip, and the axe Blaire wields makes me flinch inwardly.

Father hated me. And every time he had hit me and yelled at me Blaire would tell me I was important and special and loved and not hated at all.

But he looks like father now, and father hated me.

Does Blaire hate me?

It hurts.

I turn off the television.

Blaire.

They couldn’t take him.

‘I promise.’

He had to come home.

The stairs of our house creak with years of wear, for they stood for many years before Blaire and I stumbled upon the peculiar home, hand in hand, terrified of abandonment despite it being our entire lives. When I climb them, I take them slowly – one at a time, not two or three like I would usually bound up them – and the sluggish nature is so lethargically tiring that by the time I have ascended the staircase and shuffled into my room to sit cross-legged on my bed, all I can do is breathe.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Each cut and gash and mark that mutilates his body is like a blow to my own, where the wind is knocked from my lungs with unfathomable strength and just when I begin to breathe again, another comes.

And I can’t watch the only person I’ve ever cared about die.

I can’t accept that.

(But even fathoming the thought of a dead Blaire means you’ve already accepted his death.)

I’m not okay.

(When he dies, you’ll really, truly be alone then.)

(Nobody to tell you you’re important and special and loved.)

(Nobody to hug when the monsters of your nightmares come to life.)

(Nobody at all.)

‘SHUT UP!’

When the sound of shattered glass reaches my ears, immediately I look to the window to make sure my rainbow is still there. It is, and as I regain control of my thoughts, only then do I remember the feeling of paint slipping through my fingers, the feeling of paint splattering across my face as it was flung across the room, the feeling of blood coming from a prick on my finger where the glass jar had sliced it open.

My room is a mess of broken white things.

Dreams.

Jars.

Hopes.

Family.

Ugly drips of paint fall to the floor and they are just as unwelcomed as the tears streaming from my eyes. The water dilutes the purity of the colour, but the white splotches still remain. In this light, they have lost the innocence and grace I had once chiselled into the liquid. My instincts tell me to clean it, but I don’t.

Instead, I crawl beneath the sheets of my bed.

Somewhere, somehow, in the back of my mind, I know the time is only 8:06am.

Soon, the rest of Sycamore’s unfortunate residents would be awake if they weren’t so already.

I don’t care.

From my cocoon of tear-sodden blankets, I do not emerge.

I refuse to, until I can love the world once more.

I fear it will be a very long time before I do.