It was a long week. An empty week. A snow week.
Connor sat beside Karden in every class, but he couldn't fill the space that Lydi had left behind. He didn't say a thing. He didn't know what to say, and Karden knew it. He didn't know either, so there was silence.
He didn't hand in his paragraph. Who was Pride? Who was Prejudice?
What did it matter.
They were all dead, weren't they.
Karden's mom was worried. His grades were going to slip if he didn't start working again. What was wrong with him? Was he even listening to her?
No. He wasn't. She didn't speak in long metaphors. She didn't speak in vague riddles. She didn't speak a single, meaningful thing.
And so, with no one to talk to, Karden sat on his bed with a notebook and wrote.
He didn't write anything at first. He just stared at the lines, wondering how people could fill them with words. Words? What were those fragile, shy beasts that eluded him?
But eventually, he coaxed them out again. And his pen wrote. His mind stumbled along.
At first, they were only sentences. Fragments, even.
I've been dying since the day I was born.
The stars never shine like they used to.
My soul is a broken bottle.
I wish I'd never been born.
Lydi Stern.
And his pen bled. It bled on the paper until the pages were filled with those darting words, those crazed sentences. And eventually, they formed into some semblance of order.
Karden didn't know when that happened.
He was too busy bleeding.
YOU ARE READING
cigarette daydreams
Short Story"hey - lydi, got a light?" "literally, metaphorically, or spiritually? because i have none." "that's a bit gloomy, don't you think?" "it's punk rock."
