Short stories and poems

Abditory.

"I have a letter, God, and who do I send it to?"

I find myself slipping through the crack between the door and the walls curving inwards in an everlasting position of pain as the hollow arteries and veins seer through the peeling plaster.

A fragile figure, a little doll, a crystal sculpture; I guiltily brush off the agonising scream that eludes from the rusted lips of the heavy oak door as I place my hand against its chest and nudge it backwards.

The leather and plastic burn against my velvet fingers, but I ignore the sensation and hastily clip the door shut, noting how it splutters and coughs a cloud of dust onto my clothes as if even my dainty touches are enough pressure to worsen the green and purple splatters that crush themselves against the weary bones and melt into one with the rest of the surface.

I've always wanted a home where I can finally whisper "good morning" to the gilded butterflies within me and watch with a motherly affection as they unfurl their vibrant wings and flutter into the place I have chosen just for them.

The years dwindled by at first, but the little pebble that I scooped from the shore and aimed at the shimmering sea before me, seemed to leap faster and faster towards the horizon, leaving a path of fading ripples in its wake, and I stand alone with my toes sunken into the sand and a hand to shield my eyes from the glow of the sun.

Home doesn't have to mean what people usually see when the word is spoken by another — it could be with the person that you love.

But why would you call something a home if you know that it'll one day pull away from your embrace and disappear into the shadows?

The embers that stray from the flames and crinkle like tin foil in the livid air, the loss of warmth from your lonely hands, how do you do it?

How can you be so blind as to think that a house can be your home?

How can you be so blind as to think that a person could be your home?

But then you grab me by my collar and scream at me if I know what makes a home, and the molten diamonds that melt the wax of my eyes and spill down my cheeks is enough to tell you that even I don't know; what I do know, is that none of those things qualify for it.

For now, the doll that God carved and painted with His own two hands stands silently in the dimmed lighting of this room, and she gazes soullessly towards the view beyond the large window.

A breath of sunlight tiptoes through the window pane and sprawls itself on the floor, allowing its golden tresses to catch onto the crumbs of the past that idle on the cold tiles and murmur sweet revenge against the lives who disregarded them or flattened them beneath the soles of their shoes without a single glance behind.

My strings of fine silk hang loosely from my wrists and ankles, trailing along the ground as I lightly step across the room and approach the window.

The descending sun meets my eyes with a blinding boldness that makes me shrink back automatically.

I shouldn't have expected anything better, but, like a stray dog that keeps coming back every day to beg at the doorstep for food, I numbly raise my eyes towards the light and smile like the pain does not exist.