black water take over . } indirina

{ see myself through someone else
the strange silence surrounding me
grows closer, feels colder
but i'm ready to suffer the sea ;

Heavy eyelids peel back to reveal a pair of blue eyes. They are like the sea and all of its beauty- and all of its chaos, too- but they are illuminated by nothing. They do not glisten, as the sea does beneath the sun, they do not shine. Sleep hangs over them, like dust upon an old jewel, but there is something more to their dullness, deeper than just tiredness. Her eyes are empty. It is like something has sucked all the light from their depths- like something devoured it. Her eyes are barren.

She is not the first customer to have eyes like these.

I have seen their gazes carve all along the bar top- it is an empty, empty stare. They will look up from the bottom of their empty glasses and bleed their gaze into mine- it is all from eyes like a pair of voids. Sometimes I reach my own too far in, and I feel ice seize my bones.

I know those eyes, like the back of my very own hand. They are embedded into thousands upon thousands of skulls. Each carry a different tale, but every single one ends with darkness. I have seen it, but I could never comprehend it, could never feel it for myself. (And I do not want to- a creature as fragile as I would shatter beneath the mere touch of its fist.)

She mumbles out a broken word.
"Shit." Her gaze seems to sway- it flickers from my face to the rows of bottles behind me, and anything else in the room. "Whattya mean by home?" she asks, her words crashing into one another- a blur.

And then my flesh ignites.
Her fingers are tracing along the line of my jaw, and then her hand is cupping my cheek- her touch is relentlessly caustic. Upon contact, flames burst into my cheeks, and has she goes on and on, they only leap to my forehead and all the way up to my hairline. "Cutie I don' have a home," she tells me, and her laughter breaks the air. "Unless you were planning on lending me your bed tonight," she goes on- pink becomes crimson. It is a senseless flirtation, spilled from lips tainted with whatever the hell she was gulping down.

It's like my entire body has morphed into stone beneath her touch- I am far from accustomed to being touched by a girl, by anyone. There were short-lived flirtations and short-lived kisses from cute boys and pretty girls, but I have never been touched quite like that, never felt a heat quite like that.

I am far from accustomed to fire.
We are strangers.

With her words and her gaze- it burns as much as her touch- she casts a shadow over me, so strangely intimidating with her drunken boldness. (Or perhaps I am just a fragile boy.)

Everything seems to sway for a moment in a threat to topple down to the floor, but then I regain steadiness and choke out the words, with a face still red as rose, "Um- if you don't have a home, surely at least you have a house?" (They are two very different things.) She does not have the image of a homeless girl, or even a poor girl- she is adorned in nice, clean clothes, and she is not all skin and bones as those who line the streets. Surely she has a bed to fall asleep in- and I don't mean mine.

I walk over to her stool from my place behind the counter, keeping my gaze lowered to try to ease the heat that still rushes to my face. (No mercy.) "You shouldn't go alone in your state," I say, my eyes flickering to her empty glass. "I could walk you there?"

I offer my hand.
Somehow, it does not tremble as it hangs in the air.

{ black water take over
swallowed by a vicious vengeful sea
darker days are raining over me
in the deepest depths i lost myself ;