Phases (editing)

thirty one

AN- Chapter songs: Ends of the Earth by Lord Huron and Because by The Beatles

15th February 1996

Full moon

Sleep has not met me for many nights.

All that consumes me is Aspen's thoughts spread on pages of ink. I'd almost forgotten her pure mind and all it was made of. Her fondness for vocabulary and the pretentiousness in her thoughts. She has a way with words in which move me. Only fifteen years of age, and her mind is that of a wise witch.

She's observant and not only sees but digests and makes meaning of it. Gods , I want to rip these pages out and eat them.

Her love for life is one I hadn't known possible. Each word and stroke of her chicken scratch is etched into the deepest corners of my mind. How had I once insulted the hand that created this art? Her handwriting was rushed and illegible due to the nature of her mind– not for its chaos– how rapidly she grew thought. I could see from all that was written her need to record each word that flicked in her head.

Oh, how it pains me to love her. My skin rots for her to return; whether or not to me, but to life. Knowing she is unable to perform these small yet significant acts, forces scattered sores all over my heart.

11th October 1995

I'm a bloody fucking golden girl.

And I'll be doomed by the hand of fate. He is all I desire, yet can't champion. I cannot hold him in the presence of our peers. I cannot possess the relationships my friends are experiencing. I want to know him, and he won't let me. He's been given all that I am. I am at my knees.

Theo reiterates my task to draw a wall between us, but how do you expect two ends of a magnet to repel one another? The energy I experience in his presence is out of Merlin's fucking book.

I didn't know how wonderful rain could feel on my skin until it was happening while he kissed me. Each kiss drugs me more and more and I'm an addict scratching the walls for another fix. My thoughts silenced around him, with the need to only hear and feel him without interruption. With how he'd kissed me at that moment, I feel he has entered the chapter I have. We are both growing wholly and painfully in love with each other, and it's dangerous to know one of us could easily destroy the already cracked hearts in our chests.

I've unknowingly given him my heart and I only fear he will return it when the threads fall from their seams.

And the one thing that continues to perplex me from that moment is the question he intended to mutter to his own ears, yet caught mine as well.

How did I let this happen? He'd said.

There was a puddle of bile to the right of my bed. Warm and falling from my throat and burning my oesophagus and bringing tears to my eyes. I'm choosing to not determine what brought tears to my eyes, yet it is easy to conclude the sickness came from reading that specific entry.

"Merlin's last fuck!" Theo bellowed from his own bed.

Both he and I had been avoiding our classes this week. Him fighting a detox and I my own actions. He'd been napping, or so I thought he was– or maybe the sound of vomiting woke him up. I could care less what the answer was because he was awake and by the look on his face, he isn't going back to sleep.

"Still on about that journal?" he says more sympathetically this time.

"I don't see a reality where I wouldn't be," I respond as I wipe a napkin across my lips.