Ciao bella, my darlings! x
I've just come out with this little piece of prose in lieu of gradually overcoming my writer's block for We Watched the Clouds. It's a personal piece of raw memory that I've tried hard to transcend into literature. Hopefully it's somehow relatable to some, and I believe many different readings can be established from this piece. However, it's totally down to whatever you take away from this personally. I've establsished such a beautiful connection to this short piece in such a short time, having just written it, but already it echoes a lot of my true thoughts.
Sorry, enough rambling my darlings! x
'~,
The far-flung coast lapped up against the gray ash-like sand. Cool winds twirled the dustiness up into the colourless sky and disappeared further down the beach. The ocean was without blue, with no hue to distinguish it between itself and the land, it seemed as if the Earth was a flat mass of faded shades. Dead bramble scratched at each other before being buried by the wind-strewn sands as the dunes shifted and swayed. At the centre of it all, the only spec of colour; An orange glow maintained by windbreakers crafted from tarp and dried mud. The smoke blended in with the landscape.
A boy sat by the fire, atop a log with his palms pressed against the dancing flickers and cinders. He wore nothing but a pair of boots, tattered shorts, and a long cardigan draped over his thin frame. His legs rattled against one another, his knees tapping in an effortless staccato. Feeling slowly returned to his fingers and travelled, almost like a snail, up along his arms. The radiation of the flames licked his legs teasingly, aimless as it pulled to and fro from the boy’s legs, leaving him hot, and then cold, and then hot again. He drew his legs in against the ridges of his ribcage and stared into the flames.
His mind wandered without course, yet likened towards a lamentful discourse. Pictured before him, another boy from another life. Broad-shouldered and beautiful. Athletically-slim and quick-footed and silver-tongued. The boy smiled to himself, memorializing the other. And then he frowned, a soft downturn of his small lips. His eyes averted down to his boots from the flames as they strained from the onset of sadness. He felt firm arms wrap around his shoulders, phantomlike as it was, it comforted him endearingly. The sweet caress of warm lips that tickled him along the nape followed perfectly, teasing him a moment longer into that minute of blissful memory. All of it, the sweet succor belonging to the past of a lifetime long ago.
Safe and sound in the arms of his guardian angel, he lulled himself into a tearful slumber and awoke to the cold night. Campfire gone, and the world turned black. So black, that he could not see his hand lifted before his eyes. The moon and the stars, sparkling and glittering during that lifetime before were no more. Hiding themselves from the scorn that was the Earth, concealed so selfishly that the young boy couldn’t wish to the heavens above for guidance. He stared up at the oblivion of black, and with his invisible finger, carved the other boy’s face into the sky. Cutting him from imaginary stars so that the moon rested in the area of his heart.
And while the vim of warmth progressively drained from his body, he unconsciously drew himself next to the other boy. Hands entwined, lips smiling. In a fleeting second, the boy could have sworn he saw his drawings move. He continued to etch himself from the stars before he realized that his soul was disconnected from his body. Without knowing he entered the ethereal realm, he rose up into the black world, not knowing he was moving at all. And his soul connected like a puzzle against the stars and he blinked and finally saw the majestic night for what it used to be.
And standing before him was the boy in his mind. Reunited amongst the heavens, they embraced far above the Earth. As they always had been. Limitless and unshackled by the ground, they were finally above. Far, far above. Boundlessly and irrevocably together. Forever and ever, and ever.
Loved.
