systems going under {helter skelter vs. cat pack, day 3}

My lover has a heavy hand for tragedy.

Raised in the same I suppose we are what we know, for her words are tinged with sorrow and her actions defined by a tone of the same. She has seen the sun set one time too many to think of its rise, though the inevitable comes to pass she refuses to acknowledge its existence.

Denial is said to be the simplest method of coping.

Techniques found and those flawed I find her negativity in a lighter sense when pressed to my own. I am no beacon of optimism and for this reason alone I am drawn to the crook of her neck, a place that has heard the air of my grievances one time too many for the tone to feel unfamiliar against her skin.

Complaints and compliments one and the same— I knew the curve of her hip by heart due to the landmarks of her liabilities. We showed our scars and poked at our bruises in contest; our impurities were what we deemed as valuable and still the only thing I found in her was grace.

She found the nature of the sinful damned by the ideal of things lost and forgotten— I would never visit my brother’s tombstone but only to be buried beside it.

“Please come back, Cody. Please.” Lips pressed to the top of her head I do not remember seeing our faults in the space in front of my eyes, “We both know I am not one for promises, Imogen Tarver.” I suppose my sins were not only pressed to the hidden parts of my skin, not limited to the space that was meant to be conserved for private eyes.

A mistake misnamed— I cannot mask what lingers beneath the surface of my skin— laced between my veins is an outcry that is deaf to public ear no longer.

Publications promised the anthem strikes the sky as we rest, stitching skin that has seen needle and thread one day too many to be phased by its presence. I only see the scars of my regrets crossing my flesh but the same does not stand true for Leticia and Dustyn, both sharing the same stories of Someith and the girl from five’s blades drawn across their skin.

Glass and metal cut the same if you knew how to draw them across your skin, but this was not a habit I would pick up again— desperate times had called for a desperate measure and my brother’s demise had been situational. I was no stronger than the pieces of myself that I called whole, a tall tale of the troubled was only as great as its closing line.

No thesis for tried beginnings the anthem does not lose the passing seconds of a blaring anthem before showing the face of the girl from three, a name not known by a tired mind but pushed aside all the same, for there was only one name plastered upon my skull and it was not that which matched the face in front of my eyes. Even with her passing Hannah O’Leary strikes the sky and I do not flinch, not like my brother and his tendency to find remorse with the ticking of time.

Hannah O’Leary and I were supposed to stand upon common ground, but all we had succeeded in pushing the ground beneath our feet further away, dropping our circumstances from the tips of our tongues like they were not the defining factors of our existence.

But her brother is a victor and mine is a dead man— tell me what similarities can be found in the dead and the dying?

Deceased and damned— one and the same and she fades from sight, thankful to second nature and clinging to the last strands of a home I do not wish to hold any longer. The girl who watched the same train tracks as I pass with the shifting wind was gone and forgotten; the same fate would befall the other connected by strained relations.

I do not wish to be remembered by those who refrain from showing their regret in any way other than condolences.

I suppose that is why I fell in love with Imogen Tarver, for she did not show grief in ways other than pressing them to my skin, and when the morning light strikes my own I can imagine her palm pressed to my hip, feeling bone within the flesh and telling me that I was damned once more. I shield my eyes from the sunlight and imagine that it is the crook of her neck, lips pressed to my own skin as I whisper “I know” before rising to aching feet and stretching the limits of a tired mind.

There was no thought to be found in the denial of an existence that was surely slowing, but when we strike forward to land uncharted and unknown, we pace as though the end of the world is no longer on the timeline on which we stand.

Reckless abandon is only worth the revival when I know I’m only nailing another’s coffin shut.

Besides, I’ve buried my brother; there’s no blade or rusted metal that can cut deeper.