Once Upon A Time, Time Stopped

Chapter 7; Red Room

The wake of frost, glazed over young grass, lulls the starkness of the wind into a deep slumber. It cleanses me from sleep, like cold water from the tap might've done and, the wind trickles down as goosebumps on my skin. I clamber out of bed like a koala leaving its' favourite branch, to explore - it doesn't. Removing the duvet, it peels off as though it were second skin, with reluctancy. My body heat had transferred itself over through the discourse of the night, as if all my tired thoughts had vacated from my spirit and mind to settle between the bedsheets and the mattress, as if to say "stay here".

Many things had held my hand in this way, my child self was silenced by a baby blanket; my mother. Perhaps the greenhouse I had gotten so used to, withered. I had become dependant; shy but loud, talentless but so full of dreams, as if I were a river that travelled through the hearts of others. The fish that lived in my body contained the actions of others and I lived vicariously through other peoples' 'happily ever after' tales.

Until my own inactivity caused a drought that had buried me beneath the cracks of hardened soil, now more like brick. I am forever catatonic, in the sense that my time is still - unmoving. I crawl back under my many blankets, and look through my phone. This is how I start my days, daydreaming to have the life of some stranger on an instagram feed. Longing to be the version of myself that existed in some parallel universe somewhere else, far far far away from my version of here. To be the one that took all her chances, embraced the warmth of the sun on her skin and carried the storm from seas to land within the hazel of her eyes.

I crave the 'femininity' of a flower, what about it I want exactly ...I'm not so sure anymore. Yet, I often wish to be as alluring as the Wolfe's bane, to hold your attention by plainly being me. Like the roots of a tree, this incentive grew and grew and grew until it manifested a cobweb of toxic traits; such is the desperation to be conventionally beautiful. Such a hollow yearning, yet I knew from a young age that I was not to be adorned with any such thing. I was, and still am, average in every sense of the word, and so, back then, I sought the laughter of others in my attempt to feel needed. Whether people laughed at me or with me did not matter...

And I did everything for you to learn my name, only to misspell it then, because it is foreign on your tongue. I'm one of the good ones you see, not from your idea of here. I could not be, I was never enough, I did not light up the room when I walked into it, rather I hid behind the hips of my mother. As the youngest of the family, the wolf sought me out in many ways and, in all he succeeded, I was infested by his salivation. Leaving myself to be crucified with the apple of Eden stuffed into my innards like Christmas turkey. I let myself be heard through the voice of someone new and confident. Oh! how I'd prance about the living room singing opera to humour the broken marriage of my parents, as it watched television in the living room.

I would realise later that I had always been waiting for someone else to become my magic wand. For the man who is my father to be my father, for my mother to let her young'n fly and for my sister to love me as much as I clung to her, back then. She could do no wrong despite all the wrong she did. I was waiting for you to catch the fallen egg, to whisper to me that I am special in some form. That amongst all people I was your favourite. I was waiting for someone to remember me by name. Maybe I had strayed from my path, I had wandered too far from my flock and a Phrygian snatched me from my course by its' breath. I nestled in its' stomach and the darkness swallowed me whole, until I was no more but poison to its' lungs.