chrysanthemum rose | { d11 }

I have not shed a single tear since early youth, before the ink - snakes and roses - set into my skin, marking me ruler of the streets and dark alleys. Within the ink was my sentence, my condemnation to the heavy crown that bows my head. And written in the lines of black against softly sunkissed skin is CROOK LIAR CHEATER TAINTED, among every other foul word that can be placed upon a person.

Once upon a time, there was a foolish boy who cried rivers that could drown hundreds and screamed blares of sirens that could cut into ears from far and wide. A child, a little boy, ravaged by terror from the seas of darkness that approached with the night. But shivers have ceased to run down his spine like nimble spiders, and earthquakes do not shake him to the core as they once did.

The boy was buried by the man he became - buried by me. His grave lies in the body he once cowered in. He still lives within me, muffled by layers of steel and taint. He is detached from my name, Chrysanthemum Rose, as if he is a separate person. (He is not, no matter how much I like to tell myself so.)

The dark and the night, the things he feared hid in the shadows, fell away in his - my - rise to strength. I dominated my monsters and claimed ownership over them, forging them into my accomplices. Darkness is where my crown shines the brightest, where my kingdom of thieves and drugs thrives. When the morning dew drenches the vegetation and light slinks over the receding night, the thugs change out of their dark clothing and fade into the background of the bustling District Eleven, and I am no exception.

My father doesn't see me when he looks at me. Through his eyes, he sees the son that makes him oh so proud. He sees the exterior riddled with ice and blades - things that are alien to him but like family to me - and turns a blind eye. He can see my eyes, pale green disks of steel and defiance. He can see the winding snake tattoo on my arm, the Nocturne mark that matches my mother's and dozens of others in the same gang drug circle - if he even knows of its existence and worse yet, its cruelty. He can see the rose etched into my shoulder, accompanied by a pair of feathers, a tattoo of my own. The ink speaks to me and it says, the flight of new life.

I am not a baby with light brown curls and an angel face. I am a Nocturne, by blood and choice.

It is a family business, excluding my father, too kind, too soft, for this . . . profession, I like to call it. In a kingdom of drugs, my mother is the queen, I am the prince, and my sister is the princess. Aligned together, we are a wall of stone and might. We are cold coffins without hearts, walking with danger in our step and ruthlessness shining on our blades.

My mother says she sees softness, alike to my father's, in me, a pathetic remnant of childhood. She says it has not been washed away by the tide of fowl words and the aggressive, selfish nature of the drug ring - the nature I have adopted as my own.

Viper is the name they call out, not Chrysanthemum. Not Chrys. Not Chrysa. Along the pavement where shadows hang, that is my name. But beneath the sun, Chrysanthemum is my name once more.

I am a Nocturne, a name that has fearless, ruthless, darkness branded deep into its letters.

The streets are mine - ours.

And I am not afraid anymore. I am not weak anymore. I am not soft anymore.

(Am I?)