roan; d4 ~ fin

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There's a beauty trapped in the universe and you play with the desire within your chest to unlock it.

(Yet you can't find the beauty in yourself)

You never could, not when you gained the ability to wipe the drool from your chin and you stared at your own reflection, pressing your index finger against glass and biting your lip. You touched your reflection's nose and widened your eyes; there was wanderlust there. You saw yourself through a partial lens, you built an incomplete picture of yourself from mismatched puzzle pieces and blurry drawings. You have a complete picture of your flesh, skin and bone. You saw the outline as the corners of your lips tug into a smile, your felt the roughness on your fingers when you ran your hands through your hair and you tasted the iron when you bit your lip so hard it bled.

You tried to build something better on the basis of brightness; you tried.

Strip away the brightness, and you've lost your individuality. You're no better than the sky with its hidden wonders, the clouds and their precipitation and the soil with its challenges buried deep within. You've know the sting of monochromia better than you know your parents, your real parents, because they were gone before you could recognize your own existence. There's no beauty in trying to unlock the memories there. Hailsham Institute is your home, your family and your teacher. Nurses dress your wounds but don't kiss them better, trainers tell you where you're going wrong and don't sugar coat it. There's a metallic feel to life and yet you don't strain your eyes in an attempt to find something worth preserving here.

Life alters between a shade of pitch black and a white meadow. Morphing between a dark chasm of broken things and a library of smiles and memories. The rift of life shook, tilted on its axis and you dropped and shattered the compass guiding your body through an ashen storm. You were lost without a guide until Jane took your hand.

You rely on others because you don't have the ability to keep your dreams alive.

You became fast friends, she was the only one willing to take the place of a broken compass, in the night you confessed you wanted to be a painter. You enjoyed the feeling of tools of creation coating your fingertips; it felt like galaxies and star systems coating your palm. They peeled from your skin and you watched, you could see the shades and smile at the varying levels of brightness. "That's blue, the color of the ocean." Jane told you when she saw the stains on your fingertips. You smiled, you liked the smell of sea salt and the sound of waves breaking down rocks.

"I bet you it's beautiful, I can't wait to see it one day."

You were always a child with dreams; chasing an ashen sunrise in your sleep and colours on the basis of brightness during the day. Colours you came to accept you would never see with age. Come the moment of reckoning, that fateful realization when a chasm between your hopes and reality closed, you sobbed.

How could you unlock the beauty of the universe if you could barely distinguish the scarlet in your veins from red wine in someone's glass?

You dried your eyes before Jane found you, washing your face in front of the mirror before stepping out. Yet she could see right through you, Jane always could, she said your eyes were still red raw. You didn't drown in sadness, Jane wouldn't let your cyclical mood be defined by your limits. "You can be an artist, if you really put your mind to it." She said you were talented, that you painted like a dreamer and she would help you. You almost didn't believe her; all your compasses invariably shattered in the end.

You sunk but she would never let you drown, you spent afternoons beneath the sky. She would hold up objects and let you touch them and you would recognize their shade. You learned the difference between a red apple and a scarlet wound, cotton and clouds, nihilism and happiness. She pressed a notebook against your chest and you took out a pen, you noted what color matched with what object. You could remember brightness.

She took you to see the ocean, once.

She shook you awake in the middle of the night and quoted your own words to you like gospel. "You want to see the ocean, right?" But not like that. For you've long since constructed a shell around yourself to protect yourself from things that your skin and bone cannot. Even as a child, you rarely allowed yourself to traverse from the confines of your comfort zone. You always followed the rules to the letter, you never left your room after curfew and you wouldn't dare climb the gates, just the thought sent a tremble down your spine deeper than your own skin. Alas, no was never an answer. You doubt 'no' is even in Jane's vocabulary, the word doesn't exist in her library of wonders and broken things. You followed her footsteps in the ashen sand that night, she told you not to be afraid of falling.

That's where you and Jane differ. You see great heights and feel the urge to anchor yourself to the ground, you see tall mountains, cold summits and tell yourself that there are no footholds that suit your needs. You feel the tug of gravity and see life through a lens of pessimism. When Jane sees great heights she feels the urge to soar on the back of eagle wings. When faced with a giant mountain and a cold summit, she makes footholds that suit her where there are none. She feels the tug of gravity and sees life through a lens of adventure, you could never soar.

You did that one time, though. When you found yourself over the fence and the metallic rift that defines your partial vision was closed just slightly. You saw the ocean, smelled sea salt and felt the wetness. Yet you still saw a shade of grey, you looked up to the sky and saw the same thing, the same shade seen through the same shade of nihilism -- you sunk.

Yet Jane would never let you drown.

A splash of water in your hair, a childish giggle from her lips. She iterated that point clearly, water and air weren't the same and you didn't have to define the world by your limits. You splashed her back, the two of you smelled sea salt and laughed as you rolled around in the sand.

Somewhere, in the journey of puberty, you learned to find yourself. Carrying around that notebook whenever you dreamed of a hidden wonder in the universe and wanted to paint beneath the night sky. Somewhere, while you wielded spears and knives in the morning in the name of growing strong, Rose found you.

You find yourself wondering if she found you handsome back then, if she still finds you handsome now. A lifetime spent searching every crevasse of a world confined within the boundaries of an island, an eon searching each corner of your mind but you don't find the beauty in yourself. Your hair is black, you know that now, its the darkest shade you see when you dream with your eyes open. Medium length, it falls down in messy curtains and parts at your forehead, its rough to the touch. At least, that's what you feel and that's what Jane says. You trust her blindly, it's the benefit of her being your compass through an ashen smokescreen.

Your features are soft, your face clean shaven and your jawline sports a weak definition. Jane says your skin is soft when she touches your face, she anchors you to the fact that you're still a child at heart. Despite the weapons, despite the curiosity in a world no bigger than an island, you're all children of the universe at heart.

The pupils of your eyes seem as black as your hair, yet Jane calls it dark brown. There's barely any difference. A dark dot against a white backdrop, you consider those eyes cursed, partial. Little care went into making you, for your vision is partial and your mind is weak. You can't traverse dark chasms and rifts alone, you never could. Not when your dreams and desires rested in the hands of a reckless girl you care too much about.

You're a grey rose within Hailsham's soil. You have to grow strong here, or else, so you avoid the drink and are sheltered from drugs and cigarette packets. Unhealthy fatty foods are a rarity and sweets are a reward for you. Perhaps that's why you're so lithe and slender, most people wouldn't even consider you a career. Five eleven and an average weight, you're always out muscled and never stronger, yet there are few things that can get the blood flowing better than training in the morning. You aren't strong, you never claimed to be, and you lost independence when you met Jane and put your dreams in her palms. You pray she doesn't drop them.

You could never find the beauty in yourself, for every spot on your skin is difficult to distinguish against a monochrome backdrop but everyone else must see them clear as day. You've never thought to ask, the insecurities coil around your throat and tend to squeeze too tightly. Too weak to ask Jane but too afraid to ask Rose, so you wonder if they find you beautiful in secret and don't dare to let the musings find their way onto your canvas come night time. Rose says you paint like a dreamer, Jane says you're talented; you smile because you can bring yourself to believe them both.

You wanted to draw Rose once. You knew her windswept hair was blonde and her skin was porcelain and her eyes were blue. Jane had labelled your colouring pencils for you and you'd made sure to remember which part went where. You didn't though, because how could you draw Rose when you couldn't bring yourself to draw Jane? You were meant to draw and paint beautiful things. You live to throw yourself into the center of star storms and give yourself to beautiful things, and yet you'd given yourself to Jane somewhere in your teenage years.

Somewhere, you'd found yourself entangled in something said to be more than just a friendship with Jane. You suppose it makes sense, for you've given your mornings to the art of weapons but your afternoons to art with Jane. Yet the puzzle pieces were torn and nothing seemed to fit; her lips don't feel like they belong against yours. You don't think you believe in true love, not at this age anyway, you've never found it in your dreams or desired to find its color behind your ashen existence. True love isn't supposed to be chasing someone in hopes their actions don't destroy their body. It shouldn't be worry and empty space; "I love you" shouldn't pulsate pain in a way internal to yourself. Should it?

After chasing Jane and saving her porcelain skin from her adventurous mind, you asked her what color empty space was. She never caught on what you were getting at. While her words manage to plant a seed of confidence in your chest, her lips fail to plant well anything in beneath your skin.

You gave your mornings to Rose an training, your afternoons to Jane and your evenings to being a tortured artist; it's surprisingly easy to find the beauty in Luke, Rose and you. You paint your dreams, draw your summers and call them talented because they deserve it. Luke and Rose are your favorites of them all, their fingers find their way beneath your shell in a similar way to Jane. Yet you gave yourself to the afternoons, you say "I love you" come one pm. Yet you sometimes see a glimmer of a lighter shade of grey when you see it. You tell yourself that phrase should be reserved for the PMs, yet you find yourself itching to utter it come morning.

You're a dependent boy, a selfish boy. Every twist in your gut is wrong, Jane is your compass and yet every fiber in your being tells you to push her away and give yourself completely to the morning sunlight, lose yourself in the glimmer of her blonde hair and blue eyes. How could you be so cruel?

You never do though, Jane deserves better than that. Besides, a broken heart in her chest can mean a broken dream in your life, you need her just as she needs you; that's the beauty of interdependence. She'll never let you drown while you'll never let her burn.

So you keep her hand in yours and wonder if she'll ever show you the beauty in the color of love.