fear disaster; tom riddle

05;

DRUNKEN NIGHTS,

dangling feet from the bars of astronomy classroom cages,

laughter ripples in mumbles of inebriation,

your hands cold on my skin, my hand, my cheek, my waist.

i miss those moments, tom, when you did not care for reputation, for the future, for the idea of life not death as you leant over the smooth metals and gloried with the rhapsody of being alive.

truly, irrevocably and indelibly alive.

i miss that look in your eyes when you gazed at me, tom, not the looks of unfamiliarity when you pretended we new nothing of the other, not the meaningless looks from across the halls when your followers weren't looking. i miss the look of admiration and wonderment that coruscated and lustered like stars, like the ones we revered until streaks of morning embraced the horizon, the ones that looked like smudged dots of white acrylic across the sky, blurry with our tearful eyes, spinning with our intoxication.

i know you miss it too, i know.

i know because in those fond moments i'd often catch the glaze of apprehension and unfamiliarity rush over your irises, the crisp blue waters withdrawing from the shoreline as it prepares to flood the gates of reality. i could feel your grip tighten, like if you did not, i'd dissipate into the bitterness of night air, like cigarette ash brushed away with a breeze— forgotten and prosaic.

and i was stupid to allow it, when our patter of barefooted feet rushed over corridor stone, our jaded heavy breaths dancing to the hushes of our prudence and when we'd tumble through the dormitory your lips would linger by the bends of my ear, your arms pulling me close and the bends of my back ran with a shiver and you'd speak then:

stay with me tonight.

but it was never a question, it was a demand disguised in the silks of your allurement, and i could never quite form the words to say no. but i don't think i had that in me—to say no to you tom, to that assail of disappoint that would follow, the pout of your lips, the creasing of your brows that i so desperately wanted to smooth away.

so it was always: yes.

yes yes yes hundred times yes.

i thought that if one day, that list of requests and fulfillment racked up, i'd be able to redeem it for my own accolade and you'd comply. but i was a fool to ever think such a thing tom, you never conformed, you never acquiesced; you were a meant to rule, and rulers do not bend the knee, you, tom, just took and took and took until i was nothing but bones buried beneath a lid of mahogany and flower petals.

so my yeses i later would learn was just a list of my signatures to the devil, those cigarette ash piles, bottles of fire-whiskey, the 'stay with me tonight' connotations, all of it was simply my promises, my reservation to the underworld—table for one to dine with hades himself; and you? what of you?

i would like to believe, when your cool skin sank into the dip of my neck, where we fit so well like synching puzzle pieces that, maybe, maybe it would change you. perhaps that's why my yeses slipped so easily like honey from a spoon, sweet as it coated my tongue and smoothed the hoarseness of my throat. maybe if you just had a taste of that honey your insides would untwist its suffocating roots of ambitions and you would be able to breath, freely like me, to bloom and cultivate and smell the aromas of weightless paradise.

i don't need to be fixed delia.

i know, i know, but maybe—

i don't need to be fixed, okay?

okay.

i was a fool, but fools live in the ignorance and bliss, i believed the blindness was better than the pain of reality. and so my request, grew smaller and smaller each night i stayed: lie to me, let me fix you, help me fix you, don't leave me, stay one more day, and finally,

make it quick tom, please, make my end quick.

please.

you always said you were merciful...

and when the casket snap shuts, my mind flutters with death on my tongue—on my lips, pressing in on all sides until i accept the fact that my reservation has come:

the dinner was delightful, whats on the menu for desert?

and the devil grins wickedly.