eden. d4. fin

eden. d4. fin Jun 14, 2016 13:22:53 GMT -5

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Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Jun 14, 2016 13:22:53 GMT -5

E D E N

I. Phosphorus, (you found God in the glint of a knife.)

You wear a cross -- between collarbones and buried underneath layers: shirts, sweaters, secrets, above the vast unknown: the ridges, abysses, crossroads where the points of two scars meet. What is it that you hide underneath a milky way skin? Below starlit points of infliction, the constellations of unhealed stitches, Sagittarius A on your tongue, a fist full of pulsars. You’ve worn a cross since you became a Parish. You are devoted.

Spring blooms bruises in Eden.
You watch the petals unfurl in front of a mirror.

He used to keep you looking perfect, beautiful, cream skin cleaned of everything but the lavender shadows of some kind of sleeplessness beneath your blue eyes. Long nights left your sharp features looking worn -- oh, but that was life. You remember your mother looking tired too, every morning and evening and moment you knew her (and didn’t.)

When she woke you up for school, she never smelled like herself. The mysterious fragrance of something broken about that light, her voice, this hour -- she was a stranger at daybreak.

But she was always strange to you: the woman who tucked you in, kissed you goodnight, and locked you in the room. You could still hear the distant sounds of a loosening bed frame wriggled out, the echo of voices through the thin walls. And you used to think she didn’t want you to leave at night, walk tip-toe searching for where she went in the pipe ruins of the building.

But you were old enough. Smart enough.
You already knew, and so did she.

That was not why. No,
you could not leave Eden.

That was why.

Rusted coat hangers and metallic haste. The plaster on the walls came off in snowy fistfuls as cracks split ceilings into webs, cinder block interiors and copper pipes holding your room up as the garden fell apart. When she got sick, she told you to leave her, to run. You held her hand instead. The door clicked open one day, and she screamed your name as he led you out.

You were twelve. You were old enough for the Reaping, and so you were old enough for this.

II. Artifice, (why didn’t you ever learn to just fucking do what you were told?)

He used to keep you pretty.
But pretty was only good for a boy who was o b e d i e n t.

Spring blooms bruises in Eden. You watch the petals unfurl in front of a mirror, black and bloated and sore. They spread, seeping, deepening to make night fall across your back softly. You can’t touch your own skin, but monsters feel their way through layers of astral dimensions, moving blindly through star charts and astronomy. You cut off their hands in the dark: bite, kick, scream. He doesn't care to keep you clean; it's not good for business. You were never paradisiacal to begin with anyway.

Their sins were cyclic. Rotting patterns. Your mother prayed -- imperfectly, without piety or grace. Your mother prayed to a clement god who understood earthly vices. And twice, you watched a woman do the same, asking for divine mercy over mortal sins before she fucked you and fucked you again. You believed in the same god that granted her forgiveness in his silence. Why was that?

The third time when she tried to touch you, penance just at her lips, you bit her fucking hand until iron spilled down your chin, left her howling in the room, and fled.

Apostasy. God is not merciful.
Your hands are still shaking.

He asked you to get down to your knees. (She asked you to run -- why didn’t you ever learn to just fucking do what you were told?) You hid the stolen knife in the folds of your clothes. And the last time he struck you, you could taste the blood dripping from your nose, from the warmth pooling in your palms, from the hilt lost under the watchful eye of a god that ruled with depraved indifference. The salt stung your throat. You could feel God stir.

III. Sacrilege, (you don't speak.)

Music plays in the streets, somewhere distantly, a radio on a window sill singing notes into the open air. Blood still trickles from your nose, but you can smell the ocean now. You rise and you walk with your eyes closed. Your shirt feels damp, your hands are drying. The gravelly road hurts underneath bare feet.

You stumble, fall, cry and don't get up again.

Apostasy. God is not merciful. Your hands are still shaking when you wake up, yesterday's dreams clinging to these tremors. The woman who tucked you in, kissed you goodnight, and locked you in the room -- you cannot remember her face, her voice, the brokenness of that sunrise fracturing against barred windows. She was impious, she was taken away from you. You loved her.

The casual believer,
the unholy,
the sacrilegious.

Your parents tell you God does not care for the graceless, He does not spare the irreverent, He doesn't answer to the unrighteous, and He moved in you because you were worthy, or so you're told. But Sagittarius A on your tongue, a fist full of pulsars, secrets woven between layers of sweaters, shirts, sins -- you are not sure if you want to be saved by the glint of a stolen knife.

But you do not want to be alone.
You’ve worn a cross since you became a Parish.