pansies and thorns | {polaris/rosemary}

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pansies and thorns | {polaris/rosemary} Jul 7, 2017 18:40:50 GMT -5

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Post by umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars] on Jul 7, 2017 18:40:50 GMT -5

R O S E M A R Y .

Bubblegum pop, and Mable was standing above me in my flower garden. Taller than me, prettier.

Better.

Mable, Emerald, and Rosemary. Three sisters with three different heartbeats, but only one of them beat differently.

Three guesses which one.

"How ya holding up?" Mable asked, plopping down next to me. I wiped dirt from my elbows. "Great, you?" She popped her bubblegum again. I wish I had some bubblegum.

"You know what I mean." I hadn't even realized it, but I was sitting on the exact spot we had buried our secrets with the close of winter in the ides of March.

"I don't blame you, if that's what you mean."

Mable scoffed, swallowed some spit. "How could you not? I killed him. End of story."

"He was a bad man, though."

"Most of them are, yeah."

I hopped up from the spot in which I sat, leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

("I could be like you, Sissy."
"You're only good at getting hurt.")

"Well, he helped the pansies grow, so."

With that, I left. Closed the gate behind me— couldn't have any hungry rabbits or curious passers taking a peak at what was inside. I wore a white dress and no shoes, and by many people's definition, I probably did not seem entirely sane. That, however, was always my precise goal. My blonde hair was loose, flowing behind me as I walked, dancing in the sunlight the tree tops didn't drink up. Pines surrounded me, whispering nature's secrets and I whistled along to the rhythms of the wind.

("Sing me a song, Rosie.")

Whistle to hum, hum to song. I was singing the song my mother used to put us to sleep with when I noticed the boy in the distance, back to me, frozen. Instinctively, I hid. Momma had warned me countless times about venturing too far into the forests— "There are places without boundaries, Rosie. There are places we aren't supposed to enter."

But this boy did not wear white, and he did not hold any weapons, and he was also quite adorable. I watched from behind the trunk of the tree, until my curiosity got the best of me and I sprinted to another one, a little closer, and then another, and another, until he was so close that, if I tried, I could have gotten to him in only a couple of seconds.

Cigarette smoke.

Mabel's type of boy.

"Those are bad for you," I said with a huff, stepping out into the open.

"Worse for the environment, though."

Last Edit: Jul 9, 2017 14:32:43 GMT -5 by umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]

^{I AM A GARDEN OF BLACK AND RED AGONIES}

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pansies and thorns | {polaris/rosemary} Jul 9, 2017 8:13:25 GMT -5

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Post by kousei ♚ on Jul 9, 2017 8:13:25 GMT -5

P O L A R I S .

I don't know what I'm chasing anymore.

Whatever, no matter what it was it's brought me here, beyond boundaries set by arbitrary human judgement and left me stunted by tall trees and crushing brown leaves beneath my boot. I shut my eyes, rewinding back to ages nine and ten, she never dared bring us here. Too superstitious and paranoid and following the idea of karma and the what-ifs if we got caught. The idea only struck me as I wandered vagabond through the district with nothing but the clothes on my back and a lighter in my pocket.

I don't know what I was chasing when I decided to turn a cold shoulder to rationale and slip through the boundaries and face down trees more than double my width and exponentially taller than I am.

We weren't always warned off this area by the threat of whippings and firing squads. Our grandparents tried to bind our eyes to the truth and warn us off the unknown with superstition, telling us that on the good side there was 'good magic' laced in the roots of the trees and blooming with the flowers and leaves. But in the forbidden edge the contrary came into play, smelling the flowers on this side would make our noses rot and there would be bears waiting to kidnap the naughty children who didn't know their boundaries.

It's a good thing I never believed in superstition, even back then I could distinguish tall tales from reality.

In that case, it's obviously no surprise that I find myself surrounded by trees that triple my width and leave me stunted, and it's clearly no surprise that even being in the presence of such a thing doesn't break my routine. I pull the lighter from my pocket and the cigarette from its packet, wrapping my lips around the end and holding it towards the lighter.

I've always had a knack and never doing what I was supposed to do without my pulse so much as skipping a beat.

Perhaps that's where I'm irrational and where my downfall waits, although I step on the stories of bears kidnapping unsuspecting children and dark magic buried within tree trunks, there is nothing that can justify being skeptical about men in white and whip lashes along my back.

But that doesn't stop the click of this lighter igniting the artificial flames of the phoenix and lighting up the cigarette. I inhale a breath of smoke, as if the threat looming over within the atmosphere doesn't exist. It's simpler this way, letting the smoke roll across my lungs and allowing my shoulders to fall before exhaling it, watching the flumes rise through the air.

"Those are bad for you, worse for the environment, though" A female voice sounds and I spin on my heels, lit cigarette still hanging from my lips. I raise an eyebrow, instantly calming when I notice she's not a peacekeeper, just a pretty blonde girl my age. I smile at her words, I've heard those words before and they were spoken exactly like that. Everyone always seems to know what's best for me better than I do.

I shrug my shoulders, gripping the cancer stick between my thumb and forefinger and taking it from my mouth and letting my arm hang idly at my side. "I suppose you're right, but I haven't dropped dead so far and I ain't exactly known for doing what's best for me, can't speak for the environment though, I'm sure he'll live," I tap the top, letting the ashes fall to the ground.

"Must say though, you seem real worried about what's bad for me considering I don't even know your name."

Last Edit: Jul 9, 2017 8:20:32 GMT -5 by kousei ♚

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pansies and thorns | {polaris/rosemary} Jul 9, 2017 15:01:39 GMT -5

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Post by umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars] on Jul 9, 2017 15:01:39 GMT -5

R O S E M A R Y .

Fingers on my lips, though I didn't know exactly what it as they were trying to suppress. A laugh? A smile? a frown? Perhaps even a curse? Cigarette boy huffed poison down his lungs, my father swallowed his in the form of alcohol, and my sisters had buried seven bad people in my garden over the past three years.

Everyone had their demons, I supposed.

Pretty boy, death clenched between his teeth. Teetering on a tight rope between health and sickness, and I could guess he willingly made the journey from start to finish in no less than a pack's worth per day.We destroyed ourselves first, didn't we, but not without bringing those around us down too.

"I suppose you're right, but I haven't dropped dead so far and I ain't exactly known for doing what's best for me, can't speak for the environment though, I'm sure he'll live," he said, flicking the ashes to the ground, which was completely riddled with dry leaves other things easily ignited by things like cherries of cigarettes.

What a destructive person, I thought.

"A bit unfair, considering they can't speak for themselves," I replied, taking a step closer to him. Wide eyed and peculiar, a boy with a past and secrets and skeletons of his own. My tongue wiped across my bottom lip, idle hands by my side, fingers tapping against the surface of my thigh.

I remembered Mabel bringing home a boy named Nico for dinner once: tall, dark, handsome, and the perfect kind of dangerous for her. They had laughed over a meal of turkey and carrots, waited for Mom and Dad to go to sleep before he sneaked back inside and they opened a bottle of Dad's wine and retired to her room.

I wondered how many windows this boy had crawled through.

"Must say though, you seem real worried about what's bad for me considering I don't even know your name."

I wouldn't have said I was worried for him, as much as I was aware of how stupid he was being, but Emerald had told me I was too dainty to ever be like them before, and it was only in moments like these when I could understand what she meant. An iron belly would have scoffed, said the words I only thought. A silver tongue would have lashed back, arms folding across their chest and hissing at anyone naive enough to mistake their scales for flower petals.

"Fair enough," I said instead, "What is your name, then?" My voice had gone soft in the way it always did when my sisters had caught word of a new bad boy. They saw a challenge and stepped forward. I always stepped back, didn't I?

Accept the challenge or run, and I thought that was always what made the difference between them and myself. Because even though I knew these people had it coming, with their cigarette breath and their mistreatment of those they preyed upon, I couldn't do it. One girl had walked around with a black eye for a week before my sisters had enough and her boyfriend was never heard from again.

Still. To me, a soul was still a soul, whether it be made of precious metals or stomach bile. Who would I have been, then, to decide the fate of those whom I did not know? Fate— what a hefty word to throw around before lunch.

"You can call me Rosie," I said.

^{I AM A GARDEN OF BLACK AND RED AGONIES}

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pansies and thorns | {polaris/rosemary} Jul 10, 2017 11:55:49 GMT -5

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Post by kousei ♚ on Jul 10, 2017 11:55:49 GMT -5

P O L A R I S .

To think that I don't know what it means to self-destruct.

I don't measure my self-worth on the number of packs I go through a day, or on how quickly I accelerate towards the day my heart fades and the veins buried beneath my skin run cold. Packs are bad for me? I know but it's not as if I'm in some desperate race to keep myself alive. I know I'm burning myself, inside and out, with every huff of smoke and or every needle I happen to find shot through my veins, igniting galaxies beneath my skin.

She steps closer to me and in the split second I can still hear it, my sister's voice paired with her pleading wide eyes.

("You're gonna die, Polaris."

"Yeah, no shit.")

It's essentially drawing knives across my skin, you never know when you'll knick an artery. Playing a lottery with death and watching my lifeline decay into obscurity. Other people would find the idea that the reaper's fingers are gripping their throats so tight absolutely terrifying. Yet I'm teetering in constant limbo between one side and the other -- I've always found the dice rolled with every breath thrilling. Never one for a safety net, I've always been one for stepping across the crumbling ground without so much as hesitation in the event I took one wrong step and I'd find myself falling, tumbling, dying.

It's not the ever close proximity to death that boils the blood running through my veins; it's the judgemental eyes burning holes beneath my skin.

I've been bleeding emptiness for seventeen years now, they won't find legions of insecurities stretching over galaxies beneath my obsidian skin. I don't give a fuck how deep their judgement can bury beneath my skin, whether it's from this girl (a complete stranger to me) or my sister's pleads to get me to be someone I'm not -- ("Please, you're killing yourself.") If I'm going to accelerate toward self-destruction then I'll do it on my own terms.

I put the stick into my lips and inhale, taking in years worth of poisons and decay and letting it leave my lungs in a long exhale and a flume of smoke. "Fair enough," she replies, giving nothing away as to whether my words have drilled holes in her skin and revealed something other than a network of veins and functioning organs. She doesn't give away anything, I can't tell whether she's amused at my comment or seething with rage. I can't tell whether her skin hides the scales of someone sinister, the chainmail of someone brave or a gentle flame of someone with untouched innocence. "What is your name, then?"

Only the softness in her voice.

I manage a smile and I raise my eyebrow. "I asked first." I reply, tapping the top so more burned out pieces and watching them float towards the ground like orange glowing leaves. Perhaps it's the fact that there's nothing in the way she presents herself that gives her away the reason I'm so intrigued. Or maybe it's the way her golden hair cascades so perfect down her face to her shoulders and the way her skin seems so devoid of needle tracks that gives off the impression that our polarizations have resulted in us belonging to opposite planes. "You can call me Rosie," she says and I nod.

Rosie; such a name can only tell me so much.

I wonder if her parents have heard of me, the son of that man who took what he wanted from an innocent girl and left her with the boy that would kill her. A demon child, dying child who's broken a countless number of noses and hasn't so much as uttered the word sorry for what he is. Like father like son, we'll both find ourselves shot eventually. I've never truly labelled someone as a friend but girls and boys who sit next to me within alleyways with their backs pressed to the walls and needles buried within their skin don't look anything like her. She doesn't have chemical scars on her flesh or remnants of violence decorating her skin.

I wonder what her parents would say if they saw her talking to a boy like me.

"Rosie, I like that name," I pause, pondering whether I should inhale another lungful of poison but thinking better of it. "I'm Polaris, like the North Star." I take a quick glance up to the sky, half expecting to see celestial orbs shining white and bright in the sky despite the fact there's no possibility of the stars being out this time. I let my gaze drop, realizing how stupid I'm being.

But there's a huge difference between Polaris the boy and Polaris the star. Rewind back to the ages nine and ten and there's me and my sister once snuck out after hours and climbed the tallest tree on the hill next to our house. We'd trace the the sky, wondering if we'd find my namesake and take a piece of it with us. Or maybe we'd spot one of the constellations only seen within the pages of books meant to keep us sane.

Hear about Polaris the star and there will be an urge to sacrifice time and vision just so you can catch a glimpse of it. Just the very concept of a constellation leaves pieces of itself to take root within the district, ignition of a deep-seeded curiosity buried deep within our chests and blooming in the back of our minds.

Hear about Polaris Reye and the only piece of himself left buried within people's minds is the violence inflicted in the name of personifying strength. And in the midst of my self-destruction I am their worst nightmare. Books of history and guides to navigation have been written to the sight of stars and the direction they take us. Books of a boy slowly in the process of decay meeting golden girl in the forbidden woods aren't worth writing.

The breeze brushes my hair to the side when bring the death stick to my lips and inhale once more, unleashing a fresh chemical storm within my lungs and providing a brief moment of relief before asking with a confident smile. "So Rosie, what is it about this place that makes it worth risking a good whipping to come visit?"

It sure isn't to find a boy on his short path to self-destruction.

Last Edit: Jul 10, 2017 12:12:36 GMT -5 by kousei ♚

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pansies and thorns | {polaris/rosemary} Aug 8, 2017 20:48:57 GMT -5

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Post by umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars] on Aug 8, 2017 20:48:57 GMT -5

R O S E M A R Y .

Storms were always more poetic from a distance, when the wind and the rain were too far away to harm me, yet so close that I could feel the passion of every broken branch, hear every ghostly howl call my name.

"Rosie," He said my name like the quiet before the flood: danger looming on both syllables, treetops waving in a wind I could not even feel the presence of. "I like that name."

I started to tell him that Emerald named me but it seemed too personal, or maybe it just didn't matter.

"I'm Polaris, like the North Star." It was funny, wasn't it? How those who lived in the light were often the ones most surrounded by darkness? Stars and good men were more alike than people must have realized. I watched him, his movements, the straightness of his teeth and the lines that appeared between his eyebrows when he smiled.

He was Polaris, like the north star, who smoked cigarettes and went to places he was not allowed to go. I wondered if he was too busy helping others find their way home to ever find out where his own was.

"So Rosie, what is it about this place that makes it worth risking a good whipping to come visit?" Another step forward, close enough to reach out and touch him if I wanted to, but I did not. Idle hands hanging at my side and whispers of the leaves to keep me grounded.

"It's an in-between place," I explained. If I thought the source of my name had been too personal for him to know, then there was no reason for me to tell him of the peace I found in this vivid purgatory I had been raised around.

But still, I spoke.

"Not dangerous, but not safe. Not lonesome, but isolated. Quiet, but still alive." Ground zero. I tapped my finger against my temple twice. "It helps level me out, clear my head." I could recall my toes digging into the rich soil of the forest floors as long as I could remember walking, running: chasing after my sisters in a feeble attempt to play their games.

"Keep up, Rosie!" Mable would call.

All these years later, and nothing was different. I found a sort of peace within the madness of it, like an eye to the storm of my memories. Nothing was different, perhaps, but that meant they were not worse. Stalemates were better than loses.

"What about you, North Star?" I asked. I had expected him to smell like smoke and nicotine at such a close distance. He didn't. But I could feel it now, the winds and the rain of his soul. A storm boy, willing waves to crash upon shores and trees to tumble down mountains. Storms and northern stars belonged in the sky, though, and not where he was. Not where I was. Here, he was red rose in a blizzard, proudly showing his colors despite the fear of standing out. Neither was bad, necessarily, not the rose nor the snow, but they were meant to live in separate worlds.

The same could have been said of leather jackets and all the pines of District Seven.

"What brings you so far away from home?" Be it the heart of the district or his place in the sky. A storm or a star, or perhaps even just a boy who made stupid decisions and liked talking to girls with secrets. He was out of his element, and something told me that was exactly where he wanted to be.

Last Edit: Aug 8, 2017 20:50:08 GMT -5 by umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]

^{I AM A GARDEN OF BLACK AND RED AGONIES}

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pansies and thorns | {polaris/rosemary} Aug 25, 2017 14:33:14 GMT -5

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Post by kousei ♚ on Aug 25, 2017 14:33:14 GMT -5

P O L A R I S .

We once played in a forest like this -- Riley and I.

Of course, it wasn't the forbidden one; my sister would never dare lead me across boundaries were the leaves were said to burn like acid and bears were waiting to take naughty children who overstepped their mark and crossed boundaries better left unseen. No, were surrounded by innocence when we found ourselves playing in forests; innocent places for innocent minds. Six and seven, seven and eight -- we pined for the days we were allowed to venture to the forests near where our house sat. Where her brown hair would dance and we'd whisper secrets in each others ears. Long before --

("Do you hate me, Polaris?")

-- silence.

This isn't Polaris and Riley, this is Polaris and Rosie. We're not laughing and holding each other's hands while we pull each other along, or daring each other to climb to the next branch on a tall tree without a care in the world for if we fell and broke bones and sported bruises. This is something different, something new that doesn't belong in the world of a boy named after a Northern Star. Someone with his head hanging low and wearing his scars like they're badges of war, counting his coins and running his fingers over cigarette butts.

It's foreign to me but I let it carry on.

"It's an in-between place," she says the beginning of her explanation already beginning to make my eyebrows knit. "Not dangerous, but not safe. Not lonesome, but isolated. Quiet, but still alive." She describes the perfect place, a kingdom of limbo where I reside and wait to rot. "It helps level me out, clear my head."

I smile because it makes sense. For the first time in a long time, something has made sense in this bitter mind of mine.

I keep my hands buried in my pockets, picking her apart with my thoughts and stripping her bare with my eyes. It's second nature to me, reading expressions like they're scrawled words across a blank page and guessing who's eyes are thrusting daggers into this hollow chest of mine. Who conveys a dangerous attraction and who only wants to see everything I built for myself burn with the disappearance of my sister's winter. It helps me decide who to fight and who to fuck and she sure of hell doesn't look like a fighter.

"What about you, North Star?" I never expected her to be so close, no longer than arms length away from me. She is different, different from the men who sell me cigarettes and liquor they know I shouldn't have. Much more cleaner and put together than the women who's beds I find myself in because they're desperate to find someone who they think will take them for longer than a week -- it's never me. An arms length away; if I could just reach out.

"North Star, now that's a new one." I say, no louder than a whisper without so much of a drop of danger between my voice. Surprising, considering how far the bonds of bitterness have twisted their way up my legs and wrapped their away around my throat, tightening with every breath I dare take just so I repent for a sin committed by a man I never knew.

"What brings you so far away from home?"

I look up, half expecting to see the glittering of my namesake despite the fact that we're not shrouded in darkness. I sigh, looking back at her before speaking. "Well, haven't you ever just felt like running? Whether it's running away from something, or running to something, even if it means finding yourself in places where you're not meant to be?" I ask, my words forming their own orbit around the two of us.

Surprisingly, it's not a lie crafted from the back of my hand, it's a half-truth from pit of my chest. A bitter half-truth because I've never been one to run to something if it meant chasing shadows and finding myself more lost than when I began, I've given up looking for end points. Instead, I find myself desperately searching for a method to keep myself burning past my sister's sunset and find an ignition that isn't her sunrise. An era that leaves everyone who sees me searching for synonyms for rotten and useless.

(an age where I need distraction)

I suppose I never liked peace and quiet as a remedy anyway.

So, I suppose I could find a temporary distraction buried within this girl who approaches a violent star that burns with nothing but her flesh and her name on her lips.

"I don't think it made a lot of sense, but I just found myself here, a long way from home and I that's just how I like it." I roll my neck and pull my hands from my pockets; my next question is sure to leave her as weightless as the dried leaves my cigarette remnants threaten to burn. "How about we get out of here? Even places you aren't supposed to be can get boring as hell."

I extend the invitation, along with my hand.

Last Edit: Aug 25, 2017 14:39:34 GMT -5 by kousei ♚