AND BROKEN LITTLE
HUMAN BEINGS LIKE
ME, WE LIVE LIKE
TORNADOES AND
TOO-CALM SEAS.
.
we stayed like
this for a while.
and it had been so long
since i had someone
to rely on.
a friend. and
then i send him back
to his rock.
when i cement together
the walls that had fallen.
"now you."
is all i can say
with the limited energy i have left.
and i notice that he smokes
slowly,
still quite a bit of it left
between his thumb and
forefinger.
like he's thinking
of the right words
to say.
"it started when i was
ten.
the kids calling me names,
all that. making fun of my birthmark.
it's across my back, also the little
one on my neck."
"show me." i say.
he bites his lip harshly but nods.
he turns around and lifts his shirt.
taking it off his body.
across his back, there is a mark,
simiar in color to the one
on his neck.
it went from his hip,
up to his right shoulder
blade.
i notice then that liam has a lot of tattoos.
scattered over his skin, like mine.
i was probably too distracted
last night
to notice.
tunnel vision.
i chuckle softly so he won't hear.
and he was wearing
a long sleever today.
i walk up behind him,
watching him flich as my fingertips run over the mark.
"silly liam."
i whisper.
"you're beautiful, and you're enough."
i say, turning him around.
liam is such a good person
from what i know.
"silly liam."
he whispers.
he sits back down, as do i.
he does not put his shirt back on.
"they told me once
that i was like a wrong
answer, that somone
tried to erase, but couldn't
quite get the job done."
he sighs softly, looking at his feet.
"i was depressed in seventh grade.
got shittier from there."
he's taking longer and faster
drags from his cigarette.
trying to breathe.
"no one came to the weird emo kids
sixteenth birthday.
they knew i self harmed.
someone even scratched my cuts
once.
my parents did nothing.
they told me to suck it up.
that i shouldn't be sad.
'buck up kid! stop being a bitch about everything!'
i was like a broken record to them."
he looks at me.
"but they broke it."
tears are forming in his eyes and
he tries to blink them away
so i go to him like
a friend would.
"and once this new girl
who didn't care,
who thought i seemed nice.
asked me what it was like.
her name was perrie or something."
he breathes in deep, and i feel tears on my collar bone.
"she asked me what depression felt like.
and you know what i told her?"
"what'd you tell her?"
"i told her that it was like
you were in a completely calm sea
drowning
while others stood around
you
telling you to stand up.
that the water is shallow.
that you can swim.
telling you to breathe as the
water chokes your lungs."
my eyebrows raise.
he was accurate.
a poet.
i say nothing though.
the words won't form.
"and i thought, by now,
with all of them gone.
i would've stopped drowning..."
he finishes off
the cigarette,
and stomps in into the ground.
"but how can you stop when
you never learned how to swim?"
YOU ARE READING
HURRICANE
أدب الهواة[ larry; completed ] he was just a hurricane of self destruction, troubled by the ghosts of his past, devoid of the color that he once possessed. yet he lives on, walking with the universe on his shoulders...
