juno del air {d3}

juno del air {d3} May 7, 2020 18:12:09 GMT -5

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Post by Azalea on May 7, 2020 18:12:09 GMT -5

JUNO DEL AIR

We used to play dolls together, but we didn't have dolls—we had bullets. As violent as they were, they somehow made the happiest families. Ada would always let me have the shiniest gold one; she'd polish it up especially for me and it became my favourite doll.

I wish I still had it, and I wish I still had her.

Back then, I would fall asleep happy.

It was so easy to create the perfect family settings with those little bullets. It was only made easier by the stark contrast they made to our actual parents. They were rebels in every sense of the word: underground and uncontrollable, armed and dangerous, opposing any system that tried to keep any peace. I didn't know what it meant to be a rebel in Panem until they brought the danger into our home.

I don't like remembering what I saw.

All I knew was that they created and destroyed secret languages and I never saw any harm in that. Ada, Lark and I would naively play games together using the codes and our parents would watch with glee thinking that they would reap what they had sown. But behind the angel eyes of a mother and father was something broken and twisted; I remember going to the basement and someone was bound and blindfolded and they were kicking him over and over and over and over and over again and it felt like it never ended but then I swore I heard the moment his heart stopped. As if all the chaos in the room hit a crescendo and then was just cut—stark silence.

It still rings in my ears.

And I watched them do it. From that day on, I knew what rebel meant. From that day on, their faces were not the same as they were before—love had been replaced by a darker power. Their faces were home only to a hundred storms that all hit at once, and though I would stand unharmed in the eye, the destruction would be all around. One step and I'd feel a weight on my chest. A heavy feeling—like a permanent cold December that the sun could never quite burn away.

I never told Ada what I saw and I'll never tell Lark. She would've understood if I told her, but I was fearful that it would change her in the way it changed me, and because she was so good to me, I did not want to turn her bad. It felt like something inside of me died with that man and it was a feeling so grave, so haunting, so bitter that it has left a part of me forever empty. I have tried to replace it with the love I have for Lark but my conscience does not let me fit such a perfect person into such an imperfect place. And so, I am left with the consequence of trauma. A scar that cut deeper than skin and deeper than bone because I felt it in my soul.

I still feel it, too.

I cry—not because of these tragedies, but because this is life, and that makes it a different kind of tragic.

The bombing came next. Everything I knew became everything I lost. This loss was not the same as before—my parents were already ghosts in my eyes when I saw them take a life and something about their own death felt peaceful. It was cyclic and though I mourned them, I think part of me had already accepted their death before they had actually died. Losing Ada felt like losing the stars. You take things for granted until they are gone and it makes you realise how special and sacred they are. And how magical, too—because I remember she once made all my worries disappear and all I had to do was cry on her shoulder.

I could touch the stars with her, and catch them as they fell. I would fall asleep happy.

I don't have a shoulder to cry on anymore, I am the shoulder. Lark is the only thing I have that means something to me, and he's so fragile that I live in constant fear of accidentally breaking him. He mourned more than just the loss of family after the bombing, because he loss his hearing—the gateway to understanding and being understood. He had to start over, and because I love him, I promised to him that I would too. So that he would fall asleep, happy.

We talk in our parents' secret code now and it isn't naive anymore, it is necessary. Our grandparents do not even try to understand him out of spite because they know that before we are their grandchildren, we are the children of rebels. And they try to slip their content with the Capitol into casual conversation but I cannot care about a world war when I feel a soldier in my own family.

I wish I still had my favourite bullet, just to remind me of all the things I've loved and lost and love again. To remind me to be unconditionally happy.

But I don't. I'm a soldier in my own family, fighting not for or against any war, but for my brother.

Lark is the sun to my wilting flower and I am the universe to him. I do not want to see him fall, so I keep him too close and hold him too tight so that my arms burn and I know that he is still bright.

So that he knows everything is alright.

So that we can both fall asleep,

happy.