salinger collins. d7. fin

fox Graphics 1,376 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen May 31, 2024 22:20:20 GMT -5 but a butt ?	salinger collins. d7. fin Jul 1, 2015 15:19:17 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by fox on Jul 1, 2015 15:19:17 GMT -5 sal collins. 17. odair lmao amnesia
	Last Edit: Aug 5, 2015 11:06:42 GMT -5 by fox

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salinger collins. d7. fin Jul 14, 2015 22:11:15 GMT -5

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Post by fox on Jul 14, 2015 22:11:15 GMT -5

One

December 28th.

I fell.

They said I fell. They won't tell me where. I can't remember where I landed and broke and woke up here. I fell. There's stitches on my skull, all ridges beneath my fingers. That's proof enough, but I don't remember the world collapsing underneath my feet to give me this needle and thread. It hurts. I've broken something. I fell. From a building. From a tree. From a...I see bricks and I see branches both before my eyes, blurred together into patterns, and I don't know which one really happened.

The sky is blue behind closed eyelids. There's a wind, and it's cool and damp. The clouds dissolve seamlessly at the zenith the same way steam rises into the air from a blue and yellow cup. I can see sunlight through the trees — gentle and golden, shifting and changing shades of red with eyes closed. But it's all in pieces, fragmented by fauna. It's broken. They wear white coats because they're doctors. They're doctors, but they won't say what's wrong with me. They're doctors, but they won't fix me. I fell.

Something's broken, but I can't say what.
These bruises are half-faded but I can't say from where.

At night, I couldn't sleep. Fractured ribs, they showed me. Formal diagnosis. I'm made from matter — easily splintered into scraps, like everything else made like me. But it's not this soreness that kept me awake during the night. I fell. It hurts. And my head is tired. But it's not this weariness that kept me from sleep. I woke up feeling older, and I could see a fine layer of snow on my window sill. I can't remember what day it is. They won't tell me how long I've been here, but this book dates back to October. It's not my writing in there. But it sounds like it could be me.

They're telling me to write this all down, Adira. All the things I've done today. All stuff I'm thinking about. All the things that I can remember. I don't question them because they are doctors. I can't question them, because I can't say what.

You're the first thing I wrote down today. I thought of you first. I remember you best. (My hands shake when I hold the pen.) I hope that you're real — that my brain didn't make you up like the bricks and the branches.

I think there's something wrong with me, but I don't know what. I don't think it's possible that I came from nowhere, because I've learned that everything grows from something, for sure — even the snow that's piling up against my window pane rose first from water, from clouds, from the sky. I know; it's nature. But everything's scattered in my head, and I can't hold on to these things long enough to understand why they keep leaving me. There are so many indistinguishables in my mind that spring up from nothing, and I'm only grasping at air. I can only see moments at a time.

If I look at the cells of my fingerprints, what will I know? If I look long enough, what will it say to me? There's nothing on my mind when I look in a mirror.
I fell, but I'm not sure anymore. My head tells me different.

December 29th.

Nothing stays in my brain like I want it to, and I'm beginning to understand why. They told me this morning that it was very important that I remember to read and write and keep this book with me every day — that I don't forget again like I did when I had gotten sick. I have to think about it often, place a hand on its spine to know it's there, and keep on looking at the pages to remind myself of its significance.

The writing before mine is messy; the letters are unsteady and I don't like the way they almost fall off the page in their hastiness, in their ugliness. I want my script to look nice, careful, unbroken, (not like the way words come from mouth.) I want it to look the way I know it to be. So now I'm making an effort to dot all the i's and cross all the t's very cautiously, but this is something my hand isn't used to anymore, something that it stumbles over dumbly like it's forgotten how to hold a fucking pen. And then I'll rush through the lines when I get mad at my fingers for being so stupid, and it'll seem like someone else scrawling with my hand again.

(I hate the way the writing looks in this notebook, but it might actually be mine.)

Salinger — I...one of us isn't real. I am, but he is, and we share the same body and we share the same name. But I'm not sure if everything else is the same beneath this skin. By night, morning is gone. And by noon, night is gone. And yesterday doesn't exist the same way it did. And everything passes too quick to make sense of. It's ephemeral. These words are all that's left of before, and I hate looking at them Adira.

Isn't that stupid?

I can't remember if I've always been like this. Probably not. I touch the scar along my hairline, and I'm reminded probably not. I run a finger along the patches of purple and yellow dusk colours on my sides, and I'll think probably not. I look at the twisted joint of my right elbow, and know that it couldn't possible for me to have been born all in pieces because that isn't how people work. Probably. Not. But there's no one who can tell me otherwise, and there's no proof in blood or water, and I'm not sure of anything my brain tells me is truth.

Over and over again — replay, rewind, remember these random bits that don't make sense fluttering listless by themselves. I'm getting too tired of trying to figure this out. Or no. Maybe not tired. It isn't the right word to use. Maybe I feel heavy, but in the way like a pin has been stuck through a limb and nailed to the floor. I feel...different. The sky is blue when I close my eyes, and I'm a little lighter but it's never the same and I'm still grounded and flightless and sightless and...

My chest hurts when I breathe deeply. I can't think. I can't —
My arm still hurts when I turn it too far.

Last Edit: Aug 4, 2015 23:42:16 GMT -5 by fox

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salinger collins. d7. fin Jul 17, 2015 18:48:21 GMT -5

Quote

Post by fox on Jul 17, 2015 18:48:21 GMT -5

Two

March 8th.

They told me there's been nothing in my head since they found my body bleeding into the cracks of the earth, mind watering itself into the grass and soil. In ten years time, the blood will find its way into the leaves of the forest trees, and their veins will hold all the things I've lost — green and gold and light. But I haven't given you up to the hunger of these roots yet. I fall asleep and wake up to the curves of your face every day, and that helps me remember, Adira.

I dreamed about you last night. Again. It's all in pieces. Abstract. You're geometric shapes fractured apart. I'll see eyelashes brushed against a cheek, then strands of wheat-coloured hair in the wind, then a speechless mouth curved into the shape of a smile. You're tiny: delicate, up to my hip at best, barely three years old. I'll sew you together in my mind, looking for a full portrait of a person, of a face I might've seen before. And they tell me it's been like this for weeks — fragments find fragments, and they reassemble themselves into something more whole.

But it's coming back, Adira. I have the pages to prove it, and I woke up this morning with you on my mind. It's coming back now, I swear.

I'm flipping through all my papers again — looking at dates and reading segments of my own thoughts from weeks or hours prior — and you've always been here in my book. Except now, more scraps of recollections are starting to fall into place around you. I can name the day I remembered the names of my mother and father; I can pinpoint the time I realized that my face was a mixture of inherited material, and not just rootless stuff stitched from dust. My nose bulges a bit at the end like my mother's does, did you know that? Barely green and deep-set: did you know I have my father's eyes? Now isn't that strange?

But I don't remember not knowing these things.

When I climbed out of bed this morning, it's like I had always understood the features of my face. There was never a time when I stood in front of the mirror and wondered what I was made of, what I was born from. (Not like the words that Salinger had written a month before. I look nothing like the things he had penned down then.) I'm not the same person. Never the same person. It's like the way I fall backwards into boundless blue in my dreams, not knowing when I'll finally hit the bottom.

I'm never the same person.

But is it okay to be like that?
Am I allowed to be different?

In my mind, I've got you and mother and father and bits and pieces of scattered things: a house with a white porch, the sound of breaking glass, the feeling of a blue breeze, and all random stuff like that. I don't know what I was like before I fell. I hardly know what I was like yesterday. And Adira, I don't know if this scares me as much as it should. I don't how I'm supposed to want all these things I've never known. ~~I don't know if this is even right at all.~~ I feel different.

March 9th.

I wonder if everyone I used to know is dead.
When I say my name, nobody turns an eye to meet mine. There's no face that I've seen that I could match up to memory, and there's no one here who claims to know me either. I'm untamed, a stranger. Nobody has made me theirs yet, not for all the pages of this notebook in my hands. It's just a thought I had today while thumbing through dates. And it's just a thought that Salinger had a week ago when he opened his eyes to a house of untamed.

I don't know who they are, Adira.

I'll ask people for their names and I'll write those down in this book, but the faces blur into indistinguishable shapes by dawn of the next day, and I won't know the differences between the letters on the lines. I only know you, and mother, and father, and someone named Thayer. And those are the only constants that the sun holds for me when it rises. But they haven't come for me. I've never woken up with your hand on my cheek, your hair falling over my eyes. You haven't found me yet.

And I'm scared that I might've remembered my name wrong — that Salinger Collins was never real and that's why no one has unburied me by now. I'm scared that I might've stolen someone else's name or tripped over my tongue when the doctors asked for it on the second day — and I have friends and family who have lost me to the fickleness of these letters. No, I don't want to be forgotten. I don't want to be lost.

Addie, I can't remember who you are right now, but I know that I want to be found by you. You are still in the red of my veins, and not in the emerald of a broken forest floor, even if I can't see it in this moment.

But outside of my head, all these other people that I live with — they're nothing. I'll go to sleep and wake up and they'll always be nothing to me because I'll never know who they are and I'm afraid of forgetting their faces, but they're too many to keep thinking of. I'm afraid. I'm going to be alone tomorrow, Addie, do you know that? And I'm going to be alone the day after that. And the day after that too. But Salinger doesn't even realize it yet. He doesn't know what it feels like to depend on ink and paper for a mind. He doesn't know how fucked up everything is going to be for him. He isn't real yet.

Because I'll forget. Like I've done for the past two hundred days. I won't write this down. I get to choose. He isn't real yet.

I can't even believe it. That all of these words were mine. That I wrote all of this because an entire past existed between then and this morning, and not just my pieces. I'm nothing even to myself; I'm hardly anything looking at these words that don't feel like truth. One moment, I was back home with the sunlight filtering through the lace of the curtains, making patterns on our skin in the shape of flowers and diamonds. And then I was standing miles high, floating like leaves in an autumn breeze, eyes closed as I walked. The height seemed endless, the blue stretched on. I fell, and I'm

here.

Last Edit: Aug 5, 2015 11:03:00 GMT -5 by fox

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salinger collins. d7. fin Aug 1, 2015 1:08:44 GMT -5

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Post by fox on Aug 1, 2015 1:08:44 GMT -5

Three

June 3rd.

Sometimes I sit in the changing sunshine as the day goes by, and I imagine being at home in the same wavering rays of passing time. The curtains are white and laced, and the light poking through the cloth fall towards a wooden tabletop. Placed at the side, there’s a bunch of pink flowers in a makeshift vase, petals curling and wilting as the time passes real slow and quiet. My mother’s voice is so clear in my head that she could be standing right behind me in the living room of our house, her hand raised inches away in the air. I wait for it to rest upon my shoulder, wait for the weight of her presence. But she is never really there.

The weather is getting so warm now. And when I press my hand to my window pane, the glass is hot to touch. It's June already, did you know?

I want to go back home, Addie; I miss everything I don't have here. But I don't know what that means anymore after being uncertain for so long. I think of the house inside my head, and I'm not entirely sure how real it is outside of memory. The conviction's gone. It could all be made up, and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Nothing is coming back to me like the way I thought it all those months ago.

How long has it been now? Almost a year? It's June, and the leaves are broad and green, fanning out to make shade on the forest floor. And I can't remember what autumn looked like — except for dreams of burnt and gold branches against a blue sky, dreams of red bricks and a muted breeze; I can't remember the way I fell into a bed of leaves and twisted my elbow and broke my bones trying to leap. There's only pages left to tell me of how I was born from paper, bleeding ink, empty-headed. I'm not who I hoped I was when I woke up in the morning.

Last night it was all a mess in my head, Adira. Glass, screaming, fire. Everything makes less sense every day, every time I wake up, every moment I remember something new that breaks apart all the things that I thought I had believed in. I'll forget. I'll remember. I'll forget again. And it was a mistake to wake up at all.

I'm sick.

That's why I'm back here again. I thought I was beginning to understand — and I might help the doctors and nurses and staff when they let me, doing menial jobs, mundane tasks, and they might let me walk around now by myself, leave the hospital for hours at a time; my legs walk steady and easily now, repaired and healed all proper, and I feel okay; nothing really hurts anymore if I hold myself right, if tell myself I feel strong enough, if I forget everything for a second — but I'm still not better deep down, and it's hard to keep thinking that I will be.

You know, I used to be afraid of forgetting about myself — that I'll wake up one day and completely have forgotten how I fell and ended up here. But now I know I can't. I can't keep my mind off all the things I can't remember, and the stuff I lost to an unforgiving forest. My brain's stuck on repeat and I keep thinking about all these pieces everywhere that don't make any sense, that's just drifting out of grasp, circling over and over again in my head and...I don't understand anything. It's not right. I'm sick.

There's no space in my memory for anything else. It's only me and these segments of a past-life, and sometimes I just want quiet for a moment, to stop thinking all together like I know I could've done before. But no, I don't want to be empty again either — broken and deluded and mislead, not like that, but I don't really know, I

don't
really
know.

I just want you to tell me how to feel. Tell me who to be...Addie, I remembered you first; I know you best. But you haven't come for me, why?

You're tiny, delicate, a baby. You've got eyes the colour of the sky's apex, and hair the texture of something cottony. You've got a laugh that's all giggles, and you walk like you've never known fear. You are three years old — maybe four now — and I've known you all my life.

It's June. The sun is brilliant and beautiful and shining, and I'm sitting inside with a hand pressed again the window pane, feeling the heat against my skin. It's June, and I've barely figured anything out since the beginning of my all the pages I have in my lap. And it doesn't really matter anymore, all these things I recorded down — the people I met, the things I did and learned, the seasons changing — everything I've forgotten by now. Nothing matters because it's June, and you're still not here.

You're my sister. I remember. How could I forget? How could I have forgotten at all? You're my sister. But I'm not your brother anymore. I'm not anything. I'm not.

June 4th.

I'm just tired.

Last Edit: Aug 5, 2015 11:05:48 GMT -5 by fox

fox Graphics 1,376 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen May 31, 2024 22:20:20 GMT -5 but a butt ?	salinger collins. d7. fin Aug 5, 2015 11:07:49 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by fox on Aug 5, 2015 11:07:49 GMT -5 good god, this is done. :I

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salinger collins. d7. fin Aug 9, 2015 22:52:23 GMT -5

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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2015 22:52:23 GMT -5

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