ryleigh [d7;cbd 2]

Bloody knuckles and bruised thought— there was nothing mindless about the way collision happend during the late nights in dim basements.

Aggressive defined in the time it took to reevaluate; they called it senseless, redundant, mindless violence.

I thought of this heritage in the same terms.

Summit (noun): the highest point

I have since questioned how we have fallen so low.

My sister was a lingering afterthought, caught on the wind that spoke her name with waning importance— she left behind nothing more than an ancestry she did not remember, our names never fell from her tongue.

I have since not spoken her own, only beaten it into brazen knuckles that could run the thought across the wall like red paint. Those nights that basements strike dim, my chest is set alight, burns at the thought of her blood running through my veins. This heritage synonymous with lost hopes and aspirations— I do not see the end game that lingers upon my definition.

I’ll bleed for the war, for the takedown and the rise of power.

(I won’t bleed for a lost cause; I’ve tried for far too long.)

Metal bones and rusting heart, I have watched her pass through clear bottles and solid skin, a quivering fist and an unwanted touch. These bruises do not need explanation when I sit beside a tombstone not visited on clean merit. Guilt has planted itself in the cracks of her coffin, reminded this home of what it means to fall short of an ancestry no longer needed.

When I remind myself there is something that lies outside the lines, I feel the popping of a jaw, the breaking of a bone, the bruising of colored knuckles.

When I remind myself of her, I strike.

What’s pain without prices paid?