rowan ryecroft {d6} cb, fin

Their lives find themselves in our tough and bloodied hands. It's an immense weight for a skeleton girl, a job that is only made harder by emotion. It can cloud your head, and your head can hide behind your heart—humans are an eternal war zone.

But in the chaos, hearts are dangling from threads and we have to catch them. There is method in the madness: needles and acids and tablets and stitches. But time and time again, we are short of hands to hold and shoulders to cry on, and we stand in nothing but a breaking safe space. Heavenly from a distance, those on the outside never see the devil in the detail.

It is as if death is contagious. Perhaps that is what is sending the hospital to an early grave, perhaps death is what is painting our hearts a solid grey. When these struggles cross my mind, I don't even think twice about them.

Struggling—we are used to it. It is simply what we do.