{ aniconism } cain + eden blitz
Aug 21, 2016 3:26:12 GMT -5
Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Aug 21, 2016 3:26:12 GMT -5
E D E N
Your hands don’t tremble.
But you can feel your lungs shake.
Blood pools in your palms.
You’ve always reached for the medicine cabinet first, fingers coming away with sunlit dust from those empty shelves. Because like band-aids, like remedies, like scraping your knees on that gravelly road -- the silver is supposed to mend.
The chain fastens before your spine, reigns over the crown you felled and the skin you bear. You’ve worn a cross since you became a Parish, and underneath the first flicker of something holy at your hands, some days you feel devout. Untouched. Eden.
“Whore,” he called you.
“Parish,” you said.
“Parish,” you said.
Five years, and she is all blurry.
You held her hand. Dream of her in shapes.
Five years later, a drunken man on the street slurs out whore in the middle of the night. Hey pretty boy, come home with me --
And you think about the Reaping, about what you asked Samson in the evening after. The question faltered beneath the strength of her gaze, crumbled until you could taste dirt ruins caving in your mouth.
Don’t ignore me, fuckin’ whore --
You wash your hands.
In the water, his blood comes off your knuckles.
Other days -- you are reminded of what still rests below, placid and decaying and supposed to be mending. Your parents will tell you that God is always watching, that your time will come, repeating the doctrines of Judgment Day. You don’t want to be alone. But you were never certain. Never steady.
You move to place your cross on the medicine cabinet.
It slips from blurry eyes, falls into the sink, and catches on the drain.
Midnight. And it snaps, breaking when you tug.
There’s footsteps, a shadow. You look up from your position on the bathroom floor, sitting cross-legged and leaned against the door frame. And your hands aren’t shaking, but the cross won’t link back together no matter how long you try and reassemble the chain.
“Cain --” You turn to her and silver slides through your fingers, onto your lap. Lungs quake when you inhale.
“I broke it.”
