DAYLIGHT FADING

fifteen | you hear him whisper a prayer for the flames

            | fifteen: you hear him whisper a prayer for the flames |

                                                       or

                               | cage on the ground: flyleaf |

I stumble through the doors to my bungalow, everything slightly blurry through the filmy screen of tears I refuse to let fall. I just about manage to lock the front door behind me before I’m stumbling down the corridor as if I’m the one who’s drunk.

When I spot a hunched form on my porch, I perk up. Thank whatever deity that may or may not exist for Jez Wild. I push open my French doors and grin, only for it to be wiped away as I realise that I really should get glasses.

The person sat on my porch is most definitely not Jez Wild.

“I can wait,” is the only thing he says, nodding towards what are quite clearly yesterday’s clothes. I put my guitar case down on the porch, knowing that he’ll open it and start playing something. He’s always been innately curious it that way.

I’m also immensely grateful for the fact that he doesn’t appear to have his camera with him.

I slip back into the house, quickly crossing into my room and pulling open the first drawer I see. I have to blink a couple of times. I’d purposefully left this drawer alone, knowing what was in it.

There are piles of band t-shirts. More specifically, band t-shirts that I stole off Adam Marr. I lift one to my nose, finding myself disappointed that they don’t still smell like him.

I tell myself it is not fine for me to sigh at that, instead slipping the straps of my dress off and pulling a vest from the drawer over my head.

A print like a tour poster takes up the whole of the front of the shirt, all vibrant blues and purples, superimposed with Jimi Hendrix’s face. I step out of the pool of the dress on the floor, finding a pair of shorts on the other side of the room.

I quickly slip out of my room and go into the bathroom, wiping the smudged remnants of make-up from my face and unwinding the unruly plait of my hair. It’s no wonder no one has been yelling at me today. I look like a mess.

When I cross my living room and out of the French doors again, I look about sixteen, all bare-faced and swamped in a t-shirt at least a size too big. Part of me enjoys looking this way, just because it’s so far away from everything I used to pretend to me.

The salt air of the sea hits me before anything else, even before the music. I almost laugh as I recognise The Smiths, thinking There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is a bit of theme of late.

I don’t laugh though because I doubt that would go over well anymore. He may have hugged me what seems like an eternity ago, just before Moira Young’s show, but I should know well enough by now that it doesn’t mean that I’m forgiven.

I’ve done too much shit worthy of not being forgiven for.

Chris seems to notice me, just stood there with the hemline of my t-shirt dipped below my shorts, and he gives me one of the falsest smiles I’ve ever seen.

“If you’re going to pretend to be happy to see me, try harder. I mean, you are on my porch after all,” I mean for it to come out slightly teasing, but instead it’s just very dry. I almost wince around the same time Chris does.

His face promptly goes blank. I try to see any kind of emotion at all, but there’s nothing. It’s like the human expression of silence.

The Chris I knew what seems like a decade ago was a bright, bubbly person, always on hand with some kind of witty comment or joke to crack. Perhaps he didn’t have the almost naïve exuberance of Finn, but he was an open book.