hurricane blackmore|district 2|fin

anno ( i)

Who knows if the moon's a balloon, coming out of a keen city in the sky--filled with pretty people? ( and if you and i should get into it, if they should take me and take you into their balloon, why then we'd go up higher with all the pretty people than houses and steeples and clouds: go sailing away and away sailing into a keen city which nobody's ever visited, where

always 
                      
                      it's
                 
                                         Spring)and everyone's in love and flowers pick themselves.

anno ( ii)

I was never the pretty one. Pyrope was, with her flaming hair and oceanic eyes and her fragile, high cheekbones. Her misty eyes aroused squeaky awws from the crowd and my lusterless hair and cobweb eyes only served to force out furtive cuties but I knew that it was sympathy that drove them. The other kids call me Horseface. 

anno ( iii)

Pyrope still is pretty. She grows prettier by the day, mother says, my little firebird and I see her calculating gaze burn over my horsey face, my tangled, lusterless tresses, and all of a sudden I feel like I am being burned and tortured on the pyre, like the witches in mum's stories. She invited all of us on her lap but everybody knew that her eyes were on her firebird.

anno ( iv)

Pyrope still is prettier than me.

anno ( v)

Mother has finally noticed the hurt on my face, and she says sorry. And then I ask her what one calls a stupid apology and she pauses for a little infinity until she finally looks into my sullen eyes with a sad gaze (I think she was trying not to cry) and says with a voice not alive as much as dead and whispers like the raspy call of a screech-owl --

"An empty promise."

I think she knows that she made an empty promise, but I still hug her and kiss her a good night's sleep anyway. 

anno ( vi)

My older siblings are practicing knives today. And when I ask my mum what knive are, she turns to me with a sad smile like before (I call it the salty eyes) and says --

"They are sharp. They hurt. They are not for you, Hurricane."

But they shine in the light like miniature stars, supernovas; how can something so pretty hurt? It's nighttime, and the moon is swollen like the star-berries that grow on the bushes right behind my window. They're my bushes, and my mom calls me Star-child. I like it much more the Horseface. My mum shows me one of those knives, and they glow with a tantalizing light like someone stole a bit of a broken star. But before I can ask my mum if she has ever touched a star, she presses the edge to my plump skin and I shiver. It is cold, and the thin line of blood that appears over my skin has never seemed so warm.

"This is why you must never touch knives, Hurricane. They hurt."

But it doesn't hurt, I suck at the cut on my hands with vice-like teeth, and it is so gloriously warm and salty like the ocean breeze, or, I decide, like the skin of a star. Perhaps I'm really a Star-child now, and I can go live with the other people on the moon, away from Pyrope, away from the people who give me empty promises.

anno ( vii)

My mum says that I can play with knives now, but the ones she gives me are not pieces of stars. They are like the river stones -- worn and frayed, without the fluid beauty of last night's piece of star. I scream and scream until my voice is like a star with a missing piece, broken and lost. I want the piece of star, I yell, but my mom has the salty eyes on her face and she looks so old and tired that I cry harder, not for the wretchedness of myself but for her. Sorry, mum. But she does not say anything back and I have the horrible feeling that I have made an empty, empty promise. I said I was sorry! But today I have taken a piece away from mum, and I am not a Star-child anymore. I am a river rock being torn away one by one with agonizing steadiness. I get the burning feeling again, like I am at the stake. 

anno ( viii)

I promised myself that I wouldn't cry anymore. I am turning eight on my name day after all, almost a woman grown. But I have a horrible feeling churning in my bowels, a concocotion of blood and brimstone and tarmac that boils in my body. I look in the mirror; it's they same me, the horsey face and the mass of brown hair, not deep, chocolate brown, or the healthy brown of soil. Weak, bitter coffee brown, lusterless and always unkempt, so unlike the auburn curls of the ladylike Pyrope. When I go outside to tend to my star-berries, they are gone. They are gone. I knuckle the unbelieving tears from my eyes, rub my eyes sore just in case that this is a horrible dream and that I'm dead and that I'm falling. There are no more star-berries, just a battlefield of alabaster berry skins, broken, gnarled branches and mounds of upturned soil. Wasteland. 

"My star-berri-"

"You are not Star-child."

And a jerk of vertigo slams into me, and I don't realize I'm falling until there's a supernova of pain on the back of my head and a screaming all around me. I thought the screaming came from my mum but her mouth is ajar in terror and her eyes a paralyzed. The screaming came from me. 

After my piece are put back together, I ask my mum who was screaming. She keeps on insisting that she screamed, yet she turns away from me and I think she has the salty eyes look on her face. 

"Sorry, Hurricane."

Will my life be built on only empty promises, hollow words?

anno ( ix)

365 days have passed since I fell and screamed-not-screamed happened, and there are still scars patched on my scalp like a frankenstein heart. There are ridges beneath the almost-growing hair, and the raw, pink skin is soft beneath my fingers. 

365 days have passed since I cried, but it has been only one day past since I have seen the salty-eyes look on my mum's face.

She has broken me, but she also has broke herself. 

"Sorry, mother."

"..."

I was only nine when this epiphany ate into me like some terrible virus; somehow not all at once, but like how the laker water gets so cold at night and you have to feel the water rise above you ankles, your legs and the goosebumps on your skin. Your stomach is the hardest part. But sometimes, its just easier to jump in the water all at once, to erase any doubts and let the cold freeze you, embrace you. I let it embrace me, but I kept it on a leash. 

anno (x )

Is she gone? Is it my fault? Is -is -is...

Never mind.

anno (xi )

I dealt pain to people who needed it most. I lived on the escatic praises of my mother as heavy steel in my hands was released to issue a deep, satisfying thunk at the target. The target, I decided, was the one who needed the most pain, but with pain came mercy. 

My mum said that I had the type of merciless pain, and Hurricane Blackmore drunk the ambrosia of her mentor's euphoric compliments. My eleventh name day was almost upon me when my mum gave me the piece of star -- she said I was worthy for it. I called it Starscraper. My mum smiled at me, but it was the salty-eyes smile. I looked away with a new brazenness to every step, every breath. 

anno (xii - xvi)

Sometimes I wonder if I am alive, I scream everyday just to assure myself that I didn't die during the night.