of birds and ghosts — penelope

✦

I sit by the river as the night passes — faces and stars lighting up the sky above me. I don't dare look up as the shadows fall and fade, to stare into those dead eyes that I once(, still,) cared for. I count down the numbers on imaginary fingers, and I tell myself that I am lucky.

I am lucky that I cannot
feel the blood on my hands.

There's a certain numbness that comes with murder — a kind of death that curls up inside of you. It has settled in me now, rolling in my stomach until I am retching by the shore. But the clouds are heavy and low, and the waves are loud, and all the monsters are asleep. Here. I know the rest of the world is watching, but I don't hide my tears.

I am a beautiful girl torn from a tapestry, wrapped in old threads and tatters of silk — and I used to be a performer, a woman of grace and power, but now I am just a child in a cage. Without hands, and without my worth. I tell it to myself while no one can hear; I am worthless. I am less. And it's strange, to spend your life holding your jaw so high only to feel it sink like the evening sun.

There's a rustle of feathers against my shoulder, a tiny head nuzzling the skin of my neck, and I tilt to the side so that I can embrace the creature. "Why don't you leave?" I say this aloud, but I keep my gaze forward. On the river. On the blurred reflection of someone I once called myself. "You could go. You have every right to be free."

But I am prideful, and I am selfish; and I climbed to the heavens only to crash to the ground. And I'm still here, still bleeding, but I wanted more. I was more. Porcelain can still cut; fake smiles and happy gestures and sharp words. Performers are just ghosts in the flesh, trying to remember something of their past lives. Anything.

I have no skin anymore.

Maybe this is the real me.

And I am desperate ;

and I am a survivor.

"We could both be free."