bazima moon. d8. fin.

My mother used to call me a poet.

Pulling words from thin air, imagery flowing like water; pen to paper, and I could always find the beauty in ordinary things. It didn't matter if the lines smudged or bled through because somehow, it was still readable. Tucking them away in a heavy book, something gifted but never read, I had a collection that changed with me.

I grew up as an echo, footsteps following those of an older brother before stuttering and falling out of earshot. There always seemed to be an dull ache in my chest and a sharp pebble in my shoe. I held hands with my brother and sister, sang songs as we walked and was gullible enough to believe that it would last. But I guess people just drift apart because now there's only an memory of what we were. Empty swing sets and overturned books and middle child syndrome.

Three children, almost adults now, and all distant cries from the people we used to be. We've been pushed into boxes like storybook characters, sorted and labelled, and it's funny how you can barely know the people you grew up with.

C'rizz talks to the dead more than the living and Ayfai is friends with the animals in the backyard. All I have is me; a blurred reflection and a blue pen and a mind that's slowly turning against itself.

Holed up in the attic, ink stains on my fingers and lamplight on my skin, the words written on the walls were my salvation. Phrases tattooed on the back of my eyelids, blink and the story changes, love poems blending into tragedies. Butterfly kisses from the girl next door became limericks in my notebooks, lines about starlight and absences scrawled in the margins of school work.

Shaking hands and a crooked nose, ordinary has always been my first vocabulary word. Unsteady on my feet and unstable in my chest, a tipping disaster, but a self-contained one. Looking into cracked mirrors, I took a knife to dark hair and watched it slowly grow back again.



"Is that such a bad thing?"




I couldn't be even if I wanted to.

Sharp collarbones buried under sweaters and heavy scarves, violet shadows screaming under blue eyes. A ramrod straight back and ankles crossed in a plastic chair because that's how ladies are supposed to sit. Something unsaid lies under my tongue, bitter and poison, and the column of my throat burns with it because words were supposed to be something safe. The truth hurts going down, and my mouth is scalded to keep it from overflowing.

A double edged sword, speeches and haikus and good girls hold their tongues because my parents have always wanted the perfect family. Screaming into a pillow and opening a window, there's rose water on my skin because just good enough is all I'll ever be.

I'm not like my cousins, the ones that run uninhibited through the streets and feel free in their own skins. The ones without a care in the world, who build and destroy their images in the same breath and only have themselves to answer to. They don't worry about getting through a day or scribbling down a lone sentence before it leaves. They don't have tear tracks to wipe away at night when there's a weight that crushes their chest and leaves them breathless.

Clipped wings and dreams that were never mine to keep, angels fall like comets but little girls just fall like porcelain dolls. They crack and break like fine china, eyes blue with pigment and lips painted red with wax. They cut their strings and jump from shelves with words written on their arms and ink on their fingertips.

Falling apart at the seams but trying to stitch a family back together, there's hesitation in my every step. Hidden meanings in throwaway lines and I've always read too much into punctuation.

Dear God, they all hate me.

An estranged brother and sister, a cousin who got himself reaped and a poet who can't get any of their stories quite right. The words don't fit and everything sounding artificial, forced from my lips like a recount of pulling teeth. Zagreus and I were never very close. He spoke with his fists and my words were too soft to reach him. He was someone to look up to and admire but I was open and wore my heart on my sleeve, cried around him more often than I spoke. Too many times of don't do anything stupid or just be careful. And loss has always hit me hard, a weeping heart flickering red with a single word.

Maybe that's why I couldn't bring myself to visit before he left to face hell.

Or maybe my hands would shake too much and he'd realize what he was leaving behind.

He'd realize what was breaking.

What was already broken.