like strangers // calla [cade]

There's a supernova in your skull, colours bleeding together like tinted candle wax. Late night shadows start melting into early morning memories, but you can't tell the difference anymore.

Blue fingertips and a red heart; you're drowning in the attractions of youth. Waterlogged limbs, stuck somewhere in between here and there, and the sky's a blurred mess of light and dark. There are shapes up above, somewhere, canvas strokes of the ancients; enemies and lovers and something celestial.

You think,
it's kind of lonely down here.



Maybe this is just what waking up feels like.

Because there's no escape hatch this time, no back door or broken window to slip out of. But rooftops are familiar, an old balancing act worked into your bones. The talented, making friends with shadows and you just sit, existing. Still air and silence; sometimes it's easier alone.

You need to stop thinking like that.

But it's hard and you're so fucking weak.

Because it's the little things; hidden near the itch in your palm and the flicker beat in your chest. Like standing in a greenhouse after rainfall, warm and suffocating and sun-kissed.

Hands over your eyes, pressing memories like wild flowers, and you don't see the tempest coming your way. The light shifts and there's a silhouette, back-lit by blue and you think of open skies. Salt tears in a wine bottle and something shakes loose; visions of candlelight and rose petals in kerosene-



Stars exploding in your head, something aching in your chest, and the real shit hasn't even gone down yet. "S'okay."

"I was just-"

dying

"-chillin'."



Heartbeat; three two one. You think you taste copper.

"It's a bit much in there, you know?"