lungs ii ; quadrys' end

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ire is not what makes the phoenix, but rather the ashes that it rises from. The conceptualized meaning of this- as I've come to understand, in the least- is that my death isn't beautiful; the point in which pain becomes infinity does not know the crevices of my hope, and even through the suffocating reds and blues and oranges and yellows, I do not know myself enough to let it. Treason of the highest count is a bargain for what I've done, but there is no noose to hang my thoughts on.
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Staccato noises form weak protests on the plump of my lips and within a second, it feels as if my humanity has been stripped. Stagnant and yielding bitter, I bite down hard on my tongue, barely breaking the muscle surface before I'm met with the friendly taste of a sticky maroon that seems all-too-familiar. With this, copper shakes the hands of stale lighter fluid on my tastebuds, and I pry tear-crusted eyelids open, his name still trying to force its way out from the depths of my chest.
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After all, suffocation is the only vice that I allow myself when the beautification of the male body isn't enough to satiate the thirst of my heritage. To bring oneself to the edge yet hold death at an arms-length- sensually and with incredible care- is the purist definition of control that humanity can achieve. Perhaps with face pressed into a pillow and hair pulled taut within square grip, it would be found acceptable. But not when iced flames do nothing but mewl at bare ankle and cry out for the consumption of a boy not yet ripe.
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"I don't know why you thought you could do it." She says from the confinement of my head, and I recognize the voice of my mother almost instantly; the tone of each word is shrill and pieced together from childhood memories that were forgotten like the band-aids that mended them. Despite how much will I put forth, though, my screams do not drown out the mush of her volume. "I don't know why anyone thought you could do it."
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"Because I could have."
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"You didn't."
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"I should have."
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"Obviously not."
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A singular cackle echoes through every hair on my body and I can feel the pain etching its way up my legs with the gentle rocks of my chest. Her fingernails- as I've come to memorize from the times when they dug tombs in my wrist- are sharp and pointed like the axe that struck me down in the hands of Celia. My attention shifts to the woman still holding the matches and my volume wavers, dying down to a solemn chant under my breath. From above, I can barely make out the outline of her face as she watches at the side of Scout, their satisfaction a gleam in the whites of my eyes. I've come to decide that I want to smear the district 12 scum across the ground, but I'm weak and I'm burning and I'm on the very edge of death- it doesn't seem likely and I choke out of frustration at the girl who seems so happy yet has blood of mine painted on her hands like watercolour. 
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"It's pathetic." I pretend not to hear my mother say when her face twists into some fucked-up grin; every tooth bends my stomach into knots and when she continues, it fully feels like I'm drowning. The earth is an illusion, I wait for a voice to whisper to me, but it never comes and I'm left with the gap of incompleteness. "Utterly pathetic that a low district bitch like that thinks that she has the right to kill a career." A scowl falls upon her formerly amused expression, and I find myself being pulled up harshly, a singular tug on my left arm bringing me to a height that I thought to be impossible with my condition. But it's not me. Because just in the reach of my eyes lies the still moving body of Quadrys Lexig- or at least what's left of him. 
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What's left of me?
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What's left of us.
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Fire consumes my entire mass, as if time suddenly decided to do its job and progress, and despite the fact that I stand at my mother's side, unscathed save for the gaping hole in my right wrist, I can feel every flame lap at the harsh char of my skin. Suffocation- its aggressiveness soon dominates my screams for Atticus- for anybody at this point- and I nearly fall over, my last yelp strangling itself out from the embrace of my mangled vocal cords. In all honesty, my legs would have collapsed from the sheer force of my pain had it not been for my mother keeping me propped up with her shoulder.
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They say an end can be a start

Feels like I've been buried yet I'm still alive

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My face- a mess of blood and sweat and tears- contorts with the rhythm that marks my final breaths; nobody is here to shush me while I slowly bleed out, and nobody is here to tell me that everything is going to be alright. If honesty is a virtue, then morality is a blessing that nobody possesses, because when it comes down to it, nothing is ever going to be right. At home, there is going to be one less plate to fill, and that temporary loss is going to become something so much greater than just "he'll be back soon". Damn right I'll be back soon but hell, I'm not even sure if there's going to be anything left by the time that my flame has burnt out- both figuratively and literally- yet it still leaves me to wonder...
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how hard could it have been?
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I'd better learn to accept that

There are things in my life I can't control

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How hard could it have been to take one more stab? One more minute? One more eternity? How damn close was I to achieving the greatness that came with the victory that I deserved? But I should have known with Septys that no man stands higher than another. If that was true, he would have won.
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Septys Lexig would have won, but instead he was buried six feet under.
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I try to push away the thought that things could have been different. That maybe I could have been less stubborn. Less of a hardass wanting to fulfill a prophecy left impossible. But certainty is as certain as the lack thereof and knowing myself, even if he had won there would have been nothing but further fuel for me to build a skyscraper with my arm and shout those two words- those four syllables- that ended up leaving my family short a dynamic duo. Fuck the volunteering. Fuck the leaving our- no- my- no- Septys' two youngest with the man that started it all. 
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"Mom," I begin, my tongue wiping itself cleanly across my bottom lip, freeing the skin from the char of its fire-breath. "You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?" A short laugh fights its way out of me, before I push off of her with a wince, my feet in a pivot to face the destruction she's caused. Pressing my fingers into the soft silk of her blouse, I recognize what she's wearing in less than a heartbeat. It's the same thing she was buried in and the scent of her perfume dances with formaldehyde on my fingertips the longer I think about it. I swallow hard. "You knew that I was never going to be successful? That I was nothing more than... than you?" With the deafening ashes of a grimace lacing itself onto my face, I turn my fingers into a fist and pull her closer. 
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"Sure. If you want to put it like that, I guess you can ignore the fact that it's painfully obvious that faggot man whores like yourself do nothing but boast and boast and boast," she grabs my hand, digging her nails into and inevitably braking the surface of its skin. A deep crimson bleeds out, blending into the struggle of day two. It's everything I tried to stand for but couldn't even breathe for, and the mere sensation of it reminds me of autumn and allergies and that one scarf that hung behind the door but belonged to no one. Following this, she twists her body to the left, the entire force of her abdomen a momentum to crush my will and force me to the ground with an almost monotone thump. "But you know what's the funniest thing about people like you?"
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"What?"
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"They never know when to stop."
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And suddenly the scene restarts. I'm being dragged away still, this time by only one set of hands, and the shoe that pins me down is not that of a district twelve girl, but instead that of a district one woman. Blinding gold of cross embellishes itself onto her neck in the form of jewelry, mocking my lack of faith like a man who has refused to pay his dues to the Capitol. 
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"Praise the good Ripred, as gorgeous and grateful as we may be for His love." My mother's voice sounds numb, if it could even posses such a definition, and unlike in reality, she does not imitate the scene further by dousing me in something flammable. I do not feel the burn of lighter fluid or the harsh tug of open flame; all that occupies me is her presence, and a stiletto heel pressing into my chest. "Nobody is ever going to love you, Quadrys. Not that Atticus kid or your brothers or your husband, if you had even lived long enough to have one."
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Gentle sobs send my body into waves as she speaks and I can feel my voice dying in raw throat as I make to protest. She's right, and I gasp for air, the very thought eating me alive more than the flames ever will or would. I want to tell her that she's lying, that I have people who care for me. I want to tell her that I could prove her wrong.
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Could.
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"You know this." She inhales sharply, putting more pressure into her foot with every syllable she speaks. "And if you had acknowledged it, maybe you wouldn't be so... so damn alone." Her words make me feel small, like a child, and it brings me back to the realisation that I am a child. I'm only 16, yet I thought I had the maturity to take on the world. Why did she let me think that? Why did anyone let me think that? Why didn't I learn from my brother?
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Why didn't I learn from myself?
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I know my time is limited by the heat scraping my eyelashes, and I find myself hoping that perhaps my tears can put out the fire that has already made claim to my flesh. "I'm sorry." I manage to choke out through my breaths, which have began to rapidly increase pace and quantity. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sORRy I'M SORRY." I can't breath around my pleads any longer and my vision bleeds, morphing into the phoenix that I can only hope to become. This is an end, I think to myself as I imagine my family waking up to a number one less than they had gone to sleep with. But it is not my end.
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I'm sorry, Atticus. I'm sorry, Octys. I'm sorry Pentys. I'm sorry Mohs.
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I'm sorry, Septys.
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And in that, I feel myself succumbing to the exact thing I had feared yet loved for the first and last 16 years of my life.