She even woke up with a fright. Tens of thousands of tiny little questions flickered in her sharp stressed mind, and it was only dawn.
I loved her. If anyone. I loved her.
If only I could tell her, ease her, soothe her. It might be temporary, but she'd be all mine. I'd rather her be mine today and not tomorrow, then spend even more lifetimes missing her soft lips uttering sonnets onto my chest. Late at night, her mind raced like a thousand shooting stars to the moon. Which was funny, you know? Cause some people, you see, are artists. While some are the art. How could she so madly be both?
How terribly I adored her. How selfishly I have her, as there's no one less deserving of such greatness as I, my love.
"Today is our coronation, darling." She smiled as she wiped her hands onto her dress, somehow having the grace of a prima ballerina barely awake.
I'd always seen her as Tiger Lily. Restless. Headstrong. A perfect shot. Intelligent and sharply beautiful. My equal, even more. She was scary then, but oh, how she deathly terrifies me now. My heart in her hands, tender and red, black and ashen, how easy, how sinister, how funnily accidental she could crush it at her will, her whim, her want. Tie me around your feet, and let me incinerate the bottom of any floor that dares to touch you, unworthy and undeserving, cause even of that I am horribly jealous, Carissima.
~
I shed my last tear of broken dignity at this daydream, and close this notebook I made of thread and pieces of scrapped red paper-mache and sigh heavily. I ache. And ache. And ache. "This is the type of dreaming that drowns you," I whisper to myself, peering off into the warm blue-ish waves ahead. "this is the type of longing that leaves your healing heart with a new scar."
I sigh once more and pick up a single clear stone on the shore, beige-pink tinted. Maybe it was just the light, I thought.
Maybe it was washed up, a lost part of some plastic waste of our century.
I tilt my head toward it a bit, inspecting it a little too closely, every bit of sanity I had dwindling holding onto this small, poor rock.
"Or maybe," I exhaled, that insatiable scary curiosity plaguing my eyes now.
Maybe it was a result of the many obstacles it faces, big and small, through years and years of rough waters, winds, and other rocks mercilessly colliding with it, only to end up here, at my feet, both destinationless but with its own fate and destiny. Unsure of its purpose, of its own life, and of life itself.
I smile and then wince at my own intellectual exhaustion and unsavory self-banter.
"Welcome to the club" I growl through my teeth. Without a second sullen thought of grace, I chuck it into the raging sea angrily, without a trace left to be seen. I feel myself burn a bit inside as I feel my thoughts regrettably becoming my own again.
I breathe in and out, and sit once more, my back to the sand, my face to the silver-mist
sky. My chest buried deep under me, wild and tiring. Beating. Beating.
Stop beating.
I want to feel nothing. I feel nothing greater than the regretful hate of my weak innocence, my red tender heart. "Darken." I ache. "Dim, perish and diminish. I don't want to feel you, anymore. I don't want to hurt you,
Anymore."
But no matter how many times I scream this, how many walks I trudge through by the ocean, my ocean, my sweet sorrowful solitude of the element, I can't. I can't let go, I can't cut it loose, or weigh it down.
It had been a quiet stormy morning, fish devoid from the shore. I didn't know if it was high tide or not, the lifeguard pole completely barren and eroded carelessly. It was just me, my heartbeat beating me to death, and the sea. Maybe I could just look at the moon. Maybe it would tell me about the high tide, or
Maybe
I could tell it about
You.
I shake my head in annoyance with myself and rise sorely. I keep going. I may be pathetic, weak, aching for what I don't have, but I'm no coward.
"I remember that last time we were here." I whisper to the cold damp wind, the grey sky comforting my tired, sore tears.
"Warm and present, just after the dusk of war. You and me, only, and a pair of broken legacies. Holding me. Holding me.
Hold me."
