dignity's elegy; newt series

The 'W' in Newt Krearns is for wither.

I've allowed myself to fall into decline since the day I succumbed to a need for control and allowed rebellious tendencies to culminate into unintentional suicide. Picking my poison, filling my lungs with smoke and feeling my hands shake when my father narrowed his eyes and watched me through a lens of judgement. I never let him know, the way I allowed my body to fall into physical decline with cigarette smoke rising from my lungs like smoke from a factory chimney. Stripped of my thorns and left to wilt in a world without sun, I've been chasing the edges of darkness for over two years now.

Physical decay at fifteen, emotional decay from birth. I was born first but put at the bottom of their priorities, I would never be the career son to do justice to the name Krearns. My father saw it in the wide eyes of his son who never had the stomach for the splitting of skulls or saw the values of torment; my worth has decayed from the moment that the first knife veered a couple of inches too wide of the target.

I suppose the 'W' in Newt Krearns is for wither for a reason.

For someone who attaches his worth to how many targets he can hit, I dared to lose myself to the simple transgression of a missed target one too many times. My father was always conspicuous, finding warning signs in my hands that shook from nerves, finding reasons to scoff at the bruises along my skin; not once did I ever live past bruise number thirty.

Physical decline at fifteen, a decay of worth from the first target I dared to miss -- I never had the courage to turn knives on my own skin but I still carry the scar of incompetence all the same.

I stand tall but not proud, the ocean laps at my ankles and sends chills down my spine. I count my breaths and listen. My pockets are not weighed with stones, but I cannot sever the chain around my ankles and abandon my anchor -- I'm too afraid. So I run a trembling hand through my hair and bite my lip, fingers entwined with my hair and a silent plea dies on my lips. Because even if there was someone waiting for me in a land were only the waves reign supreme, they would not be able to help my anyway.

Physical decline at fifteen, I find what it means to truly rot at seventeen.

(The W is for wither)

Shattered ribs, glass in my eye; I remember what it means to teeter on the edge of limbo. To walk streets as broken as I am and wonder how many better career than me died when the wrath o the sea took the entire district. I do not scream at the memory, but my lips trembles at the smell of sea salt, my muscles tense at the touch of water. It feels like glass to the eye; I'm reminded what it means to suffer through a partial existence.

Wither is an integral part of Newt Krearns; my worth was halfway through the stages of rot long before I lost a part of my self to circumstance beyond my control. Now, every heartbeat is a silent scream for mercy and every breath taken is another knife twisted beneath my skin, but this is not what it means to suffer.

This is what it means to wither.

I do not scream, because I should be used to things being taken from me. Life is corrosive in that way, and I do not have the venom within me to fight it anymore. So I let it take me, let it burn my skin, let it corrode my will and melt whatever ice made me numb to the sight of my decay for the past seventeen years. The 'W' in Newt Krearns is for wither, this is just what it means to life a partial existence; the scars of incompetence run deeper than just a missing eye.

"Please, don't take me," and here I thought I was done with pleas to those that couldn't hear me. "I don't know if I want to go."

Because I never had the courage to watch myself drown in shades of red, and Enzo wouldn't dare let his cousin lose himself to a blue flood. I would not die at sea, but I don't want to live in this land.

I tend dangerously close to limbo, waiting for a miracle that doesn't exist.

I watch my worth wither with my will, because I attempted to justify my fragile existence with an axe to a skull because I could never bring myself to turn in the blade on my own skin, but I was eight years too late. Too far along in the process of decay for salvation, I wonder if I will lose pieces of myself to the sea once more. If I'll listen to the walls I built crumble beneath the sky and crush me beneath a pressure I could never bring myself to comprehend.

I will not pick myself and try again, but this is just a game of luck -I'm tired of losing- but there cannot be a winner in this crevice of despair. Physical decay began at fifteen, the withering of my worth began at the first target I dared to miss; this fact is illustrated to me by the eye patch I wear and the scar of incompetence I pray I can hide beneath my sleeve.

It doesn't decay like the rest of me, it doesn't fade like I once begged it to.

I wither, I rot and my ashes will not be scattered in this sand. Justification for my existence came eight years too late.

I'm too afraid to drown, be it in a shade of red or blue.

I press my finger against my wrist and listen to a pulse, a partial pulse and trace it to a heartbeat that races when I pressed the blade against my skin and filled my pockets with stones -- (pick yourself up and try again, you're just unlucky this time.)

Wet cheeks and sobs into a sink; I wish it were that simple. That's the thing when things don't go your way, it's easy for people to say they will. But this is more than just a question of luck, more than just a transgression of incompetence being rewarded and the first son being shunned as a failure. This is real, the look on my father's face and the sound of his voice. Justification for my existence came eight years too late.

I shut my eyes and listen to the call of the sea; I'm too afraid.

The 'W' in Newt Krearns is for wither ;I missed that target one too many times to call myself worth it.