anatomy of a parasite :: love
Jul 10, 2021 18:22:50 GMT -5
Post by pogue on Jul 10, 2021 18:22:50 GMT -5
L O V E
I’m twelve years old and running my fingers through the soft grass of our backyard, legs crossed into one another and a scrawled through notebook balanced delicately on my kneecap. Childhood has a way of providing wonder to even the most simple of things, it ebbs and flows and embeds itself into your brain and your heart until all you can do is look at the world in sparkling hues of white and gold, no negatives found in the innocence of youth. It’s why my eyes drift up from the grass and into the haunting tendrils of the willow’s branches above me, a million little paths of yellow and green veins whispering sweet nothings into the wind and carving their echo and image into blue orbs. Its form daunting, its shadow heavy and sweeping over the area like a blanket and I found my youth in this very spot, crawling underneath the canopy and losing myself in the way the branches soaked up the sunlight and made even the brightest of days feel like night.
I’m twelve years old and far too young when fire springs up through the dust and the dirt next to me, orange lizard wriggling up through the soil and staring at me with curious eyes. It’s like my mother’s hair, the way it looks like the sun and the stars and everything in between in all of its orange glow, hot and bright and-
- warm, it feels like warmth when I smudge my fingers black scooping it up from the dirt and pull it into my chest, cupped hands quivering softly in the afternoon breeze. The diamond branded into my chest burns with anticipation and warning, hidden under a makeshift bed of bandages and disinfectant as a mark of my own failure, and as red and orange curls around my fingertips with the lizard moving around its new domain I can think of nothing but my Father’s frown at the result of my first Formation Trial, at the way his lips etched themselves into a frown I’d never seen before and the way the sound of a slamming office door still hung heavy in my head and my heart, shaking walls a reminder of my own failure.
Things feel better, for a moment, with red and orange crawling innocently between trembling fingertips.
But Dad has a no pet policy that’s ten Ratmases strong now, heavy memories of Vanya forcing us to put down a puppy at the top of our lists flooding in from the back of my mind. She’d write her promises in the false hypotheses of childhood naivety, claiming that if we all asked for it together Dad would have no choice but to get it for all of us.
And every year we came up empty handed, hiding disappointed faces behind a smiling facade until finally we just stopped asking completely. Lux and I had pressed a cup to the door and our ears to the cup and listened once to hear Mom approach Dad about the pet because we'd forced her to over lunch, pinky promises and crossing our hearts until we hoped to die in a last ditch effort for what we thought we'd always wanted. We got our answer in whispers of emotional attachment and unnecessary burdens, my Father's voice stern and demanding and my Mother's ethereally brilliant in all her wonder.
My biggest mistake isn’t failure, it’s not listening to what my Father wants me to be.
Because I slip fire into my shirt pocket and feel it wriggle as I slip out from under the tree and through the back door of our house, I hold fire tight in my palm until I hear the safety of a soft click of my bedroom door lock behind me. Bloodstained fingers pull an empty shoebox from under the bed and fill it with soil and rocks and my own childhood innocence, blue eyes stare for just a heartbeat too long at the pet I'd always wanted and the pet I knew deep down that I should have never had. A dull pencil marks carved air holes into the box before sliding it back under the bed and a pile of blankets from the edge of my bed.
I whisper a promise laced in everything I know to be sweet that I'd be back soon as my hand rests on the name I'd scrawled across the top of the box, cloaking it in darkness with the echoing click of a closed door.
"So what'd you name the lizard under your-"
"-Shhh. Stop, Vanya. Please"
"...Well?"
"June."
"...June?"
"That's what I just said."
"But it's July right now."
"I like June better."
"Fine, whatever floats your boat."
"Vanya?"
"Yeah?"
"Please don't tell Dad."
"-Shhh. Stop, Vanya. Please"
"...Well?"
"June."
"...June?"
"That's what I just said."
"But it's July right now."
"I like June better."
"Fine, whatever floats your boat."
"Vanya?"
"Yeah?"
"Please don't tell Dad."
It works, for a time.
Because between the swords and the steel that growing hands struggled to swing and grasp I found a reason to look forward to going home that hadn’t been burned to a crisp in the wake of a diamond brand embedded into my chest. I pull dust covered books from the shelves of the local library, feel the paper flip through my fingertips as I search for what my newfound pet should be eating.
I carve my own happiness into the same soil that I’d spread my roots in, plucking little worms out of the dirt and storing them in a tiny baggy in my back pocket for June to eat. And with careful fury I scrub that same dirt out from under my fingernails until there’s no trace left of my betrayal to the rules, blue eyes watching my pet scarf down the food I give her with a smile on my face. Late nights and late night thoughts, a flashlight flickering into view at half past midnight and letting June crawl up and down my forearm, a chorus of giggling and childhood laughter muffled only by my own hand over my mouth.
It works, for a time. Until suddenly, it doesn’t.
It’s on the third week that I notice the way the lizard’s limbs move like they’re drenched in molasses, that I notice that the same fiery orange skin is growing paler by the day and, no matter how much I poke and prod softly and whisper those same promises to a childhood pet it does not respond. There’s three dead worms left uneaten in the makeshift home I’d made for June when I slide it back under my bed for the final time.
It’s on the morning of the fourth week that I lift back the cover and tell myself June is sleeping.
Because it’s sitting there unmoving, eyes closed and limbs splayed out in what my mind wants to tell me is peaceful slumber and I don’t want to hear the way my heartbeat thuds and hammers in my chest, the way my cheeks tingle and eyes water and-
No, June is just sleeping.
A lamp ripped from off my desk and placed above the shoebox shelter and I think it’s enough to warm her up, because I’d read that lizards like this need warmth in between the lines of a library book and my own naivety, and maybe if June is warm she’ll wake up and maybe that’s all she needs. Or maybe she needs to be pulled close to my chest again, cupped hands still and my own mind ignoring the way the wound on my chest burns in a destructive reminder of my Dad’s rules. Because I think June just needs warmth, because she’s so cold and-
Death, in all its permanent glory, tears me apart.
It curls bloodstained claws so tight around my heartstrings that I feel them sever and fall one by one between stammering breaths, it bares its fangs in the way I still have to look down at a dying flame laying in the soil below me and still isn’t moving. Death threads its scythe and slices into the backs of my eyes and I feel water blot itself at the edges of my vision no matter how hard I’m trying to blink them back and press my palms to stop the flow because Dad always said that a man who cries is worth nothing to the world.
My fingers curl and bend in somber silence, bloodstained claws carving my sins and my legacy into the earth. There's a raging storm cloud stained grey and blue behind my eyes, tears splattering a shallow grave and the silk wrapped form of my first and last pet and I can't stop the tears anymore, a storm breaks and a heart follows along the same path and I shudder at the feeling of ice on my cheeks, the way the tears arc and bend down my face and splatter the earth below with a reminder that I’d killed the same thing I’d loved.
I bury June underneath the harsh heat of the July sun, rays bouncing their way through the branches and painting themselves against the bark in some form of twisted smile. There’s two branches crossed into an X and a rock painted orange, just like my Mother’s hair and just like fire and just like June. Hide my tears at the dinner table and plaster a smile on my face in a hopeless facade and nod along that I’m okay when my Mother asks, all tender endearment and curious eyes contrasting my Father’s cold stare. I slip into bed that night with the click of a door’s lock reminding me of Death’s arrival.
"…Love”.
"Yeah, Dad?”
"…Get up. Now.
”What?”
"I’m not going to repeat myself, Love.”
…
…
"Is this where it’s buried?"
"…Yes."
"Dig it back up."
I think my face writes shock into itself, moonlight bouncing against puffy blue eyes and highlighting the way my cheeks sag and lip quivers because my Father simply raises an eyebrow, nodding his head before motioning to the sad pile of dirt that I'd mistakenly called a grave and not a warning.
A rock painted orange still feels as warm as the sun when I remove it from the grave and pull the sticks gently to the side, left only with a half a heart and a pile of soil. And for the second time that day my fingertips ache amongst the heavy heart of the earth, pulling back the tear stained mixture of rock and soil one shaking hand at a time. There's dark smudges on my knuckles by the time I pull the buried figure out from the ground in silk much too white for a grave this rotten. "I'm sorry-" I begin, but my Father's hand grasps my shoulder so tight that it feels like the limb will pull itself from my body in muscle and flesh and marched me back through the house, tears and soil and shaking limbs marking a path back to my first mistake and my last betrayal.
Dirt slams up from the shoebox as my Father pulls it from the bed and slams it onto my bedside table, the edges falling into one anther and leaking bloody pools of watery soil. He rips June from my grasp and pulls back the silk and I watch it tumble and swirl in the glow of the moonlight until finally the corpse of my only pet plummets back into its makeshift home, a chorus of stifled cries and choked back sob clawing their way up my lungs and out of my throat. My Dad leaks stoic silence and twelve years of disappointment as he turns to me, ice blue eyes drifting into my view as he lowers himself to eye level, ice cold thumb pushing hard against my cheek to flick a tear away.
"Death is certain and it is unavoi- Love, look at me."
…
"Death is certain, death is unavoidable. Do you hear me?
"… Yes, sir."
"To let it affect us is to make ourselves weak."
…
"I need you to understand this, Love. To let it affect us is to what? Tell me."
…
"…It- it makes us weak."
"Good."
My Father rises in an air of mutual understanding, in heartfelt emotion and heartfelt disappointment and nothing in between, glancing at the same shoebox where I'd hidden fire only weeks before. What's left is only ashes and embers, smoldering in their own grief.
"You'll keep that in here until you can look at it and feel nothing, got it?"
"…Y-Yes."
"And Love?"
…
"Don't let this happen again."
For a week straight after I woke up with tears blotting the edges of my eyes, taking in the forgotten sight of an unkempt grave. And, for a week after that I felt the same severed heartstrings ache and shatter in my chest when I looked down at the body of a fire too hot to ever be held, at a June broken by my own naivety. Too afraid to stow it away, too afraid to lie that I felt nothing, too afraid that I always would.
By the time my heart ices over the form of my only pet is faded and dull, time picking at its edges with hollow fingers and licked lips. I toss the dirt-filled shoebox into the trash on my way to training in the early morning and feel nothing, a soul coated in diamond and steel and nothing at all.
Death, in all its permanent glory, tears me apart.
Until one day, it doesn't.
