he keeps a knife under his pillow - don't tempt him because his fingers are faster than your tongue tied in knots and before you know it your voice is a ghost of a scream and you're still
he doesn't even cry.
she smiles with sharpened teeth - she is a dagger and though her edges seem soft, you will be cut because you are softer, you are pliable and breakable and she is ice she is stone she is beauty
she is awfully tired.
smudged red lipstick and drowsy lullabies paint her childhood memories. she thinks she smells whiskey somewhere, but she's tried to bury that scent ever since her father grasped the glass bottle, grip too tight and her throat constricted she was a snake and they were all fractured pieces sprawled out on the ground. the puzzle was too hard to put back together and they were just kids
he shakes sometimes - silent tremors as those things he pushed to the back of his mind strangle him with their words, their hushed voices and prolonged screams. he hears glass break.
he wakes up with bruises.
a pool of blood collects around her feet, just like the satin blue dress that hangs on her. it was beautiful until the bottom was tinted crimson; scarlet soaked up up up it's matted in her thick curls, dripping down her bare chest, covering her hands her fingertips her lips her shoulders (even the divots in her collarbones are filled with deep vermillion). she inhales and it smells like copper and it tastes like finality and fire disintegrates her bone marrow until the goddess is dust
he cries.
sorrow coats her tongue and she feels like she could speak it like a first language. her lips parts and people cry because all that red has drained and now she's that sickly, decaying, limp blue - she is horror and revulsion and there are marks circling her neck. all the air in her chest has been sucked out and her ribs and lips are cracked like the sky (it's pouring, can't you smell the sweet rain?)
he cries he cries he cries.
on the other side of the world, he is alone. that knife under his pillow is in his pocket and he's running faster than the bolt of lightning that illuminates the midnight sky, pitch black because someone had stolen all the stars. greedy greedy greedy. (she's not much better)
his feet ache and blisters burgeon on his red-hot heels. he's peeling and falling and slipping. he is a flash, he is gone, the knife is in his back, those coal-black eyes of his are lighter than they've ever been because he's getting younger from how much he's been crying. sobbing so hard his chest may just split open (someone could pick the flowers that had been blooming between the gaps in his bones, all yellow and purple and blue and red - no, not red, he hates red.)
he lives in bursts of color - there's too much, it's too complicated. he wishes life were in black and white.
red droplets cover her skin until she's buried underneath them. it's too thick and she can't breathe but she's not scared - no, she's accepted that, she's accepted her fate and she's waiting until she finally sees stars behind her closed eyelids.
she's so far from divinity that she's already burning.
