Solo: For You and Your Denial.

Her face is drops of holy water for someone dying of thirst, light of stars in the dead of the night to guide the lost souls. I linger on the familiar specks of dust within the galaxy across the bridge of her nose before my attention drifts up to the shadows beneath her eyes that I recognize so similar to my own.

I finally take a dip into the abyss of her greens, her intentions echoing in every inch of her face as her gaze doesn’t leave mine. She’s not here to ask for permission to eavesdrop on my mind this time, but demand in forest fires the answers dug in the wild at the devil’s hour. My smile unfolds in all inviting ways at the ashes of such devastation to come while I sit down in front of her. The glass in the middle becomes a mirror of memories I know we have played until the record has broken, and I can’t tell who’s more bruised and battered, tired and twisted, when we are experienced enough to walk through the maze of reds as if it weren’t a dead end instead, and smile at the god forsaken and damned wall in sight. We have been here before, same Hell, same demons. She holds up the phone and it sure is a call I don’t want to miss.

“You took longer this time. Thought you had given up on me already.”

I am a disheveled proof of shattered slumber too, but if any confuses it as a sign of defeat, they wouldn’t be farthest from the truth. In this imprisonment, a riot whithin me breaks. I’ve learned hope is late and flawed, but the fate that comes in my hands will be certain and razor wire sharp.

‘We haven't even started talking about what happened yet.’

I raise my arms, the sound of handcuffs shackling following after fingers spread in careless gesture. Unstressed beats denotes the essence of forced patience, there are only shadows of a virtue she has always teased me I need to have.

“It's not like I wouldn't be waiting for you anyways.”

‘This is not a joke.’

“Oh, I know it isn’t.” I lean into her direction which makes her involuntarily straighten up. Her voice is almost a whisper as if she went just far down to remember what brought her here in the first place. These metaphors of red, there’s no lesson at the end of this fable.

‘You said there was a reason.’

“It is not letting you sleep, is it?”

‘What?’

There’s a glimmer in the dark side of these moons like menacing signs of what may be hiding in the dark. She recognizes it and her lips part but not a word leaves. She is haunted and she is hunted, just as I am. "The thought that maybe I had no reason to do it.”

‘Luke, —’ Drowned violence, her fingers curl in a fist I know so well would meet my jaw if it weren’t for the glass separating us. Desperation kills.. ‘Where is Eden?’

I was found with my mother’s blood all over my clothes, but I can’t remember what happened with her, no matter how much I try. That doesn’t stop me though, nor the ongoing thread leaving my lips, from tangling her in every tale told already in my mind.

“It was that lipstick color that reminded me of mom.”

“The dress was shorter than normal.”

“No, no. It was her face that started reminding me too much of that ex.”

Strings of nothing, I tug at them further, and her jaw tightens while her chest heaves with every breath.

I raise my hand only to gesture with an opened palm to hold on whatever outburst she’s about to have because none of the others actually were it, and bang it on the table in a sudden bolt making the guards look towards us. I inch closer and she does too, like moths to a fire that neither of us started. It’s not the truth burning in between but so it teases to be with that silence in anticipation before a smirk breaks through in one of the corners of my lips.

“The devil made me do it, Stella.”

I burst out laughing and she stands up so fast that the chair she was sitting on falls to the ground in a clatter behind her. My midnight sun sets sooner this time, but the toxic in my tongue stings to keep on poisoning even though it’s already dark. The rest of the inmates start hitting their tables. Can’t you hear the crowd? They all go wild, sister. Should I even call you one?

“You know what I am talking about, aren’t you?”

Her eyes well up with tears but she doesn’t let any betray her over the valley of her cheeks. These are the wildfires I have grown up with. We were always apart but never foreign, three flames burning just the same. One guard approaches her to tell her it’s best to leave. Another comes to tug me by the arm and starts to drag me back to my cell. I shout it for the record though, right before she’s out of my sight, for her and her denial.

“Red is red, nightingale. No matter who bleeds it.”

Delirium, it feels to fill the spaces between my bones replacing cartilage because I’m still laughing behind bars at the life’s best joke we sure are. I give it to these winds of night and the myriad plagues of war inside my mind, the corners folded for pending answers that turned to crumpled papers instead, the ink smeared, the ruins on sight. Her faith will turn to dust every time she comes and I’ll help her burn the picture of the brother she thought she had.

I don’t remember the exact moment when I started screaming my lungs out nor when closed fists couldn't stop hitting the walls around. I have woken up locked in another room —the lights are off, my throat is burning, and there are lines of red with ripped skin all along the knuckles.

The sound of metal sliding follows and with the light that sneaks in, I can’t help but squint my eyes in that direction.

‘Are you going to plead insanity, bastard? There’s no mercy for fuckers like you.’

And again it closes but the darkness plays it all again: The scream before I step on the sidewalk before rushing into the house and find claws inside her ribcage, ripping her heart out; his voice echoing in my mind while the blood between my fingers pooled to the cold concrete floor. “Accept who you are. You are one of us.”

I fall to my knees, the weight of truth pulling my spirit towards Hell. I know now she was light, consumed and abused by the dark. My mother slowly lost her mind before she gave me away more than a decade ago.

Eden becomes vividly evoked nightmares after, asphalt deathless death and ashen face. I touch her memory and the photograph of flesh and bones disintegrate to dust, candles of unholy summoning have walls around me turning into warping liquid wax.

This is a prison of another kind but this life sentence I want to fight. Hands full of ichor, skin drenched in her blood.

I always felt I never belonged and I've been showed the reason why. I'm writing an entirely different plot though, shredding the infernal pages in blood soaked wet confetti and throwing them back at him.

I'm half the world away. I'm letting you go now, my red starved bird.

Solo. Theory of a Deadman.

I have always hated what people names 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦. For a reason I can’t figure out yet, every now and then I can hear the voices inside their heads, the choices that has left them bleeding out in regret and every original intent lost in translation haunting their souls to their grave. I have started believing it is a movie I’ve been cursed to watch over and over again —different faces, same fucking hoax. Happiness is so ephemeral. 𝘞𝘩𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳, why take a picture of the memory if you’re going to burn the whole album after? I don't have absolutely any interest in it, though sometimes I would feel the resemblance of something warm in between the bland repeated patterns with a couple of people I've met.

My phone chimes with a text message: “Don’t be late.”, and the urge to wander tonight after classes burn the most at its wake. I happen to know 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦 is a show and nothing my said parents have told me, is true. My sisters, I doubt they are by blood anymore, are there in blissful ignorance and the only reason why I return to that place until I find out more.

This anger feels dormant but never quiet, muffled by a layer of indifference that’s been growing thinner every day for the last six months. The more I think of it all, the more I realize how much I feel foreign to everything around me. The borderline pointless narratives —spring, summer, winter, fall; the rain, the sun; the line about doing the right thing bring you good.

The volume is turned all the way up while caught on my own static, but even the lights overhead buzz way too loud. I wish the world stopped being so excruciatingly long and unbearably exhausting. Each one is an isolated noise I would, with pleasure, put out.

“Are we interrupting, Luke?” I lift my gaze only so to advert that our teacher didn’t have the decency to clean his glasses before class. I smirk —amused actually, with the fact that he has been able to notice anything through them in the first place.

‘No’, I spin my phone between my thumb and index finger. ‘You can continue.’

I hear a couple of snorts, a low laugh, and I see the color of his face morphing to a shade of purple. 𝘐𝘴 𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩? I do leave that sight soon enough, to see Rigel, mouthing an “ass”. She has only done it a thousand times before, with the same roll of her eyes and hint of a smile I’m sure she would rather no one to notice. This are one of the few moments I want to linger on, but they always end far too soon.

“Out, Mr. Madden. There are people here that really want to learn.”

I reach for the strap of my backpack then, tapping two fingers to my forehead before waving goodbye on my way out of the classroom, though I ache to deliver only the middle one to his face.

Claire’s there to meet me, her face framed by sleek dark hair to her shoulders, the red on her lips capable of adorning novels of cheap-talking. While perched on the school’s alley with one foot propped against the brown brick surface behind her, she extends her hand holding a piece of paper. “Bad day?”

I take it from her fingers, check the address written on it is far from here. I don’t know this girl much, and even though Rigel told me she would be able to help me finding someone, I doubt she cares about an actual answer.

‘So, this is where she is?’

With a slight push from her foot, she peels herself completely from the wall. Circling around me, she doesn’t stop until her lips are behind my ear close enough to whisper. “I wouldn’t wait that much to say goodnight to mommy. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘯𝘦.”

My hands hold on air —one moment I am reaching for her neck; the next one, she is gone.

They feel flesh-hours, palpitations I could feel on my temples as I press the pedal. There is no way I could get there in less than a couple of hours, though the roads are not that crowded, and I deliver an insult to slower drivers here and there to clear the way.

You have the truth too late, then there is the sound of a ripping page, a scream. 𝘉𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨’𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘪𝘯, 𝘐 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘣𝘺 𝘯𝘰𝘸.

‘HEY!’

I’m tripping out of my car, rushing to her door. Another scream. Reality shatters in crystals setting the house ablaze as I break it open. The smoke licks the ceilings, the flames surround it. My blood hardens beneath my skin and the floor sinks with me. 𝘐𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭? 𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘐 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘴𝘦𝘦? There are nails raising and burying inside her chest, her soul leaving her eyes as her heart is now squeezed within demon-like claws.

I crawl to her side after it disappears, but I feel something turning on the lights inside of me, making itself at home, tasting death in the moments before the stiffness, before someone else’s fall. I hear it spitting my grief before speaking out. It spreads like a plague, his voice, reaching every corner of me:

“Welcome home.”

Torn at the seams, I’m a dead man walking tonight.

Solo. Inception of Reds —level 2.

“This isn't reality, Cassia. Come with me.”

There are footprints in the scorched floorboards, handprints in the burning clothes. I hear their screams as they melt with the dishes piled beside the sink, the letters on the coffee table no one is going to read.

In moments, I want to believe if I had done something, everything could have been stopped. But I only become one with the smoke behind and outside the glass, with every fractured mirror in that house and with the unsung song in the graveyard of what's lost.

‘You shouldn’t be here.’

I could sense Rigel growing tired on the other end. The deeper I go, the most difficult is it for her to keep the connection, and for Saiph to reach me.

“I know this isn’t a line you hear from me much but, this isn’t healthy.”

I shrug my wings and hear myself laugh. The very sounds coming from my lips breaks me, and I am dripping the bright, bitter red from my wrists once again. We are sisters of the night, but in this starless sky, there are no tales being whispered above us with nothing else clinging to our nakedness but our sins —drinking, burning, daring to dream.

As if she were my shadow, my mother does the same. The fire running in as her fingers move, and their lives run out. I remember when I missed home, I would close my eyes, focus on the color of her hair, the sound of her voice, the curve of her smile.

The sound of footsteps down the stairs comes to a halt. His expression is guilt and regret, rushing to reach my mother, stopping her from feeding more the flames, ‘What did you do, Ava? What are you doing?’

Fire runs wilder out of the windows in the second floor, the last screams explode and crack as the earth breathes thankful for the feast. She doesn’t even flinch, she only feeds until the beast is satisfied. She is scarlet stars, and they are only smoke in the throat of void, a few teeth and a pile of bones.

She looks at me, and every memory is more ascending smoke. The red in her eyes is eating the blue serenity that once used to lull me to sleep every night, and there are only cinders over ruins for miles.

‘I still can’t see it.’

They are both leaving now, going back to the car where my six-year-old version has woken up on time to see the show while Ainsley continued sleeping on my lap. My flesh is radiant as the light of the fire reaches the high of the night, showing my tear-stained cheeks flushed with red.

Saiph clamps her hand around my forearm then, and there are specks of that same fire in my eyes, burning with the hunger to turn something else but me to ashes for a change.

I know if I went back to the elevator and chose another floor down, I would find her again, sitting on the ledge of the window, urging me to jump off with her. No matter how much I plead in suffocated grief, asking her to stay instead, every time it would end just the same: she turns into unfeathered death meeting her end. She lost her mind after a black-bird’s call took her to a place she couldn’t completely come back from, when she didn’t know what else to do with all the blood in her hands anymore.

‘I still can’t see why she did it.’

I speak with the anger in my heart. I am crimson bled, thunder roaring, siren sung in every shade.

“Cassia. We need to leave.”

Fallen from grace, I can’t remember when my mind was softer —without death clinging to my wings, and blood drying at their every feather.

Solo: Inception of Reds —Level 1.

Where do people go when they die? There's the haunting autumn dance of bright reds and golden oranges, twirls of some lookalike fires that don't warm but instead freeze the fingertips that have met winter and dismissed the rest of seasons after a tragic day. They say their bodies go to the ground in that definitive “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”, returning exactly to where they came from. But what about the spirits? Oh, they are supposed to be immortal. They say they can not die. The sound of browns in fallen leaves seem to retort the statement with each step I take, as the wind whispers in cool breeze against wild embers that I should stop right there. But the tombstone is not in my sight, not yet. Broken hourglass, I don't feel the time passing by until I finally see it. “Is that so?”, I ask in my wearing blacks and a hand on the grey rough nature of the grave with cursive white carvings before leaving a token of crimson roses to adorn on top.

I follow the familiar path to the nearest tree and sit on the roots that grasp dearly to the ground in silent prayer. It doesn't take long for delicate fingers to reach for the totem of my inception in my pocket, for the shiny blade to meet skin, for metal to bite flesh.

Pinch.

I paint a line across the velvet and drops of blood kiss the bed of withered grasses and thirsty dandelions in another call for what is six feet under the sleeping earth and peppered copper memories. Surroundings are replaced by the darkness of closed eyelids, thoughts scatter like the fallen petals of the wreath from my first visit before the flickering light nudges me back to the familiar place, the cage style elevator, gates to the ‘other side’ of my own making with memories stacked like books with no option to change the endings. Fingers move across the button panel, rusted hints of many rides taken tainting the color of metal, before pressing the one with the number 1. The machine begins moving and as it descends, I close my eyes to the glimpses of the different floors slipping past before the ghost of a smile unfolds reflexively when the clattering comes to a halt.

Her laughter is already filling the air before I unveil silent abysses of blue to the ongoing masquerade of echoes playing along with other deceitful lullabies. The record may be broken on all its favorite songs but it plays in racing crescendo when the little girl of around five with reddish tresses just like mine, runs to meet me. I draw her back and every crack that has felt like bottomless pits of hollow silence, sings red.

“I got you”, she claims, clinging to my legs and squeezing them before running again but in the direction of my mom and dad in the backyard, with the hissing of flames and the barbecue smoke reaching the clear skies.

‘You got me’, I whisper to the perfect living family portrait only a few meters away from me. This was a Sunday, an ordinary one. Their smiles are as bright as I remember, but there's no perfume in the atmosphere, no scent. I know the food will have no taste again but I will take it like my poison of choice and blank it without allowing my mind to ask how or any reasons why.

“We were waiting for you”, Ainsley’s voice is so sweet that it cuts me even deeper than any blade. Despite its light nature, I feel it so heavy in my pocket now. The ongoing reminder that this is not —

‘Life’, shoulders roll in a shrug as I reach for the porcelain plates in the cabinets and walk to join them. The sun dances in my skin in remembrance of what once was and felt like summer but that doesn't warm these exhausted bones anymore.

“Cassia”, a voice breaks through and the ground shakes threatening to shatter this fragile world of mine in a million bleeding mosaics.

“Stay with me”, my little sister —that in some place out there is around my same height, same age now— starts pleading, fingers clinging to the black skirt of my dress in utter desperation.

“We are waiting for a train,”

The familiar words wrap around me in a trap I can't let go of. I know this air isn't real but the thought of leaving has me suffocating as if it were.

“Cassia, open your eyes.”

“A train that will take you far away.”

The sounds warp and collide becoming static of infernal frequencies. It's the reality I still don't know how to recover from. My mother’s voice is now a hand on my shoulder, and I can’t move.

“Cassia, come on.”

“You know where you hope the train will take you, but you can't know for sure.”

‘I'm —’

I'm kneeling, her burning eyes making ashes out of me. Haunting lullaby, my tongue is numb for the song I've sung until I bled.

“Yet it doesn't matter. NOW, TELL ME WHY?”

“Cassia!”, reality hits me with a gasp. Laying on my back, chest rises and falls while glassy emeralds are crashed with similar voids in light browns. Her eyes are the earth covered in autumn leaves cradling a late November fire. She wrote an oath with my ashes, claiming to know my pain all too well.

‘Saiph’. My fingers curl around her wrist, and I can't help but avoid the mirrors of this tragedy as her hand stays on my cheek. I'm awake, but I can still hear her voice ringing in my ear, impossible to eradicate. With tears tainting her fingertips my lips part, and it's not a prayer but a broken promise what leaves them while looking up at the cloudy skies:

“Because we will be together.”

She dusts me off my coat of rust. I've been sleeping for a hundred years. .

𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐨: 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐬.

I'm not a stranger. No, I am yours.

“Dear diary,

Today I convinced myself it was ok to give up. Don’t take risks. Stick with the status quo. No drama, now is just not the time. But my reasons aren’t reasons, they’re excuses. All I’m doing is hiding from the truth, and the truth is that… I’m scared. I’m scared that if I let myself be happy for even one moment that…the world’s just going to come crashing down, and I…don’t know if I can survive that.”

With the first fallen leaf of autumn, I am pulled into my dreams again. His color was the ivy winding over the walls of an abandoned house, the nature that crept its way inside in rushing streams and leaves that would survive the summer’s blaze and the winter’s freeze.

He was more than the folk tales, myths and memories of this town. He was more than his doubts, and every ghost resonating in cinders and ash shining golden in the dark side of his irises.

‘Don’t.’

I have wondered, again and again, how many times you could will someone back into existence, how many times you could mold your grief into the person you love until you start forgetting the exact color of his eyes, the every line of his face, the correct shape of his mouth? By now, I started leaving those questions in the threshold between sleep and awake. Whichever reason his voice rings with the same warmth in every chamber of my mind, I would seek no explanation for, not from the universe, even less from the stars.

“Elena, I can’t.”

A fragile frame aged, with misery. But when our eyes meet, you know I see. .

My hands cradle his jaw, and I feel every universe of our memories held between the cells of my body screaming in recognition. It's him, with his every muscle starting to relax at my touch, with his hesitation cracking and the shadowy veins under his eyes fading over this connection that feels more like an extension of ourselves since the very first day.

‘Yes, you can. Don’t hide from me.’

He always knew how to read me and every layer of this so woven-in-me nostalgia as if he were flipping the pages of my diary that I hide on the second shelf behind this ceramic mermaid. I remember how this goes, but I am caught in the need to keep this scene on pause, to keep this film reel from playing another second that would drive us sooner to another goodbye.

I do not wanna be afraid, I do not wanna die inside just to breathe in.

He cuts off my every unsaid thought with a kiss. His borrowed mouth tastes like a late poem, words arriving too late to soothe my every worry. But his fingers in my hair keep me grounded, to a reality I would many times question the very existence of.

You feel so real. You sound so real.

Eyelids flutter in the glowing memory, unable to fully catch my breath. I feel the weight of his gravity on top of me, but I choke in the realization is the past wrapping around me.

These autumn dreams are tales of exodus, ones that open skin and reach flesh. I still taste it when I open my eyes, in the yellow lights tucked in a bird’s delicate wings wary to fly again.

I'm tired, of feeling so numb. Relief exists. I find it when — I am cut.

‘I met a girl. We talked. It was epic. But then the sun came up and reality set in.’

Well, this is reality. Right here.

It only feels this raw right now. .

Outside, it all has started peeling its usual evergreens to wear a soft blend of yellows and rusty browns. One single leaf lands on my hand in mute crimson glory with the hints of sun in its veins, light reveries of summer. This bird inside my chest sings so sweet as it watches the sunlight fade, as your arms wrap around my waist and your lips are as close as I always want them to be. You would break your back to make me break a smile.

‘We have a moment, forever, and I believe you will always be my favorite work of art.’

The branches’ silent prayers to the skies are farewell dust and echoes of smoke while the sun smiles in orange hues for this desire to breathe out the soft-tinted fragile papers of a life, breathe in a fresh start with the sense of everness out of a delirium.

I bring you to my mouth, and guide you to pin me like the note you are to keep because it is the idea of a story you can’t get out of your mind and want to write every day since today, an idea you can’t leave alone until novels are composed from dusk until dawn and you have abandoned reality to become one with it. Your touch is gentler in lust, like secrets in whispers, and as always, my face would flush while you carve your name in another tree of the garden in my heart. This feels timeless, something born even before my lungs’ first breath when I can’t remember the last one done with this ease.

My chest moves to the small droplets of another memory, and the meaning of your words tempting me out of the hurt I once knew. I am a moment of bliss, walking barefoot over cobblestones glimmering blues, with the rain washing away the last of the dust of time. Some thoughts are forbidden, but not this one —the way we have already stripped the other of every metaphor and read every verse with naked fingertips, the way I have fallen in love again, the way I have said yes. .

‘Every book is for someone. The act of writing may be solitary, but it is always a reach toward another person – a single person…’ —Siri Hustvedt

He is my person, the one I want to reach. My poem, with constellations of stars in his eyes and auroras in rhymes. He has no pen in his hand, because it has it busy holding mine. He’s found his every word flows in threads that can dress me in lilacs. And in the absence of them, we cook, we bake, we slow dance. .

I love you, Jackson Rippe. Happy Birthday.

𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐨: 𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞.

There is something about goodbyes. The taste of them burn the longest after they are gone I'm not one to know about vices, but the few times I've had alcohol to the point of stuttering my own name, the hours of sobering up feel like a child’s game compared to the awareness of a reality you can’t close the book to, no matter how much you want to.

I've grown so fearful of attachments, and used to walk the other direction the moment I feel the most comfortable with a place, a person. It may sound cruel, to let go of something in the epitome of greatness, like the summer peak in the glimmer of dew over petals, like the rays of the sun on the wings of the bird drinking it. There are so many stories to read, to tell, I know, but… I guess, I would rather the scatterings of wondering than the bleeding from attempting to hold something real that was actually so fragile, something that consumes itself to the core, something made of glass.

Yet here I am, instead of looking away to the blurring view of my own nostalgia and every tale of discarded permanence reflected on the train window, I am checking on the boy with his eyes so fixed on the book on his hands, just as I was on mine, before I noticed him.

I am the leaves still frozen from the previous night, now touched by this warmth and the way the clouds gather golden behind him around the setting sun. I know I shouldn’t be writing my own book on the way the light falls from the crystal windows to his skin, the way the shadows of the tall trees in passing look like poetry down the slope of his neck —so articulated and poetic, I’m between the bookshelves back in London, sipping tea with honey while chatting with a blue pair of eyes.

I wish he wasn’t such a summer view, not this day of autumn, because it brings a longing, like the grief you feel when you wake up from a dream you didn’t want ever to finish. My gaze should have been long enough for him to notice, because he is soon lifting his and meeting mine, and as quick, my eyes are back to the book, as if they never left. I even pick up the exact last line before my internal voice started having a more entertaining thought to divert and linger on.

I hate goodbyes. Maybe that's why I don't say them, maybe that's why I avoid a Hello in the first place. I think I would rather a lifetime of misery by my own choice than handing this option to be decided by someone else. I exhale, but the longer his eyes stay on me, the sooner curiosity bursts from my mouth in a laughter of red roses over the slow death of my every belief.

He’s leaned enough to peak on the title of my favorite Jane Austen’s book I’ve been unable to read for half an hour now. ‘I don't remember there's any writing of her that has ever made me laugh like that.’

My smile can’t be concealed by the book either as I lower it down until it meets my lap. I crease my brows in a feigned frown as I press my lips in an attempt to tap at some resemblance of seriousness. “I think it’s different when you find your own tragedies funny enough.”

‘That’s a book I would definitely buy.’

“If there's any kind of magic in this world... it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know it's almost impossible to succeed... but who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt.”

The journey back to the surface is slow, like the smoke of a cinammon candle slowly rising to half closed eyes and half said words. I taste everything in between, the resilient sunrise shining through the grey clouds, the pitter-patter of rain hitting asphalt, the rustling of leaves over the earth, the chocolate between a cold set of hands drank on a porch. I’m soaked in nostalgia and lilacs as I wake up, drawn to that familiar warmth.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you. Mind if I sit next to you?’

“It’s okay”

There’s a wrinkled space between my eyebrows, wondering if I am still walking the edge of a forgotten dream. I’m confused between the lightheaded giddiness and the wash of calmness his presence so close to me brings.

‘…Have we met before?’

“I don’t think so. I... I’m Tessa.”

He unzips the bag, and for a moment pauses, as if giving a silent minute to the absence of something that was there not that long ago. He swallows, but whatever it is, it has found a place to lodge in between his ribs and wrapped around like seaweed.

‘Nice to meet you, Tessa. I’m Atlas.’

I am shaking my head at this sensation of dismissal of the normal markers of days, months, years. I believe I have forgotten where I came from, what I was doing, and where I am supposed to be going.

“I was just sleeping and had this funny dream.”

‘That’s okay. I guess we all have those, huh?’

The seed planted a dream ago, sprouts. What was he doing in London? What is this sadness in his eyes? And I want to dunk both of my arms into the midnight rain of brown and blues and throw them onto the canvas, let the liquid stardust splatter in maps of something that would never be lost.

It is night time, and the train's loudspeakers are announcing we are finally leaving; And though we may turn back into pumpkins in the morning, I ask:

“Until reality has the taste of it. How wild your dreams are?”

He meets my gaze then and holds it in secrets and intentions to strip each one of them to the bone, and for the longest second, I wonder what it might be to kiss him... A pulsating new truth takes shape, and I’m not pencil lines trying to contain it. I guess we all are some kind of haunted, I guess we all want to be found.

‘Tessa, you have no idea.’

I realize that I have never left the easel. The brush is still on my hand, unable to stop myself from adding touches because I can't conceive this is the final draft of my life. My fingers are smeared with his colors now...

And I know I’ll always think of him, even more in midnights like this.

𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐨: 𝐈𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐬 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞.

“I’m so going to get you for this.”

I would jump on his back, but different from every Hallmark movie scene, my moves were very far from gentle. I was tackling him, forcing him to meet the ground with the same carelessness with which he grabbed my journal and peaked one too many lines earlier that day. There wasn’t real intimacy within them though. I did not talk about past loves or steamy reveries in the shadows because I never had those. Maybe that is why it took me a while to get rid of the red in my face. I was more embarrassed about the attempts —feeble and pathetic ones— to try to capture these feelings I would see in other people’s eyes, everyone’s but mine. There was no glow in our parents’ for the longest time, and the closest to a spark I had seen was in his but before the accident. They had been nostalgia a thousand miles down to the seabed since, the once evergreen became the arms of the ocean refusing to deliver him back to me. The fractured sunlight on his face had me wondering so many nights how long until he surfaced again, but the crashes were Hell for a broken like him. He was under. .

I don’t know in what moment I became as foreign with the sky. I was a bird captured in a cage instead, and behind the bars, I know I’ve put myself there. I watched wisteria grow all over these wings, because I didn’t move in years.

How scared was I about getting hurt?

I was terrified, I still am. If I were to continue writing that book today I would say something like: I had to walk away. Everything is more fragile than what it shows, so fragile I feel like the wind could blow it apart anytime. So I stop myself from touching his heart to avoid becoming a mosaic of pain myself, but that doesn’t keep me from missing the cracks, from aching the every bloom we once promised we would grow together.

But these reasons aren't reasons, they're excuses. I knew. Yet I continued drawing the curtains close to drink them like poison.

I wish I could write something else but this, say something else but this, but I am made of too many elegies to forget them. I cupped sea-water in my hands with knuckles bruised like violets, and I felt so very far from whole on my own —like if I were barely a piece of something greater, too little to calm someone's thirst or to wash off someone else's sins.

We'll forget all the problems of yesterday, all the stupid decisions, the growing pains.

When the silence took claim me, his fingers were tugging at the locks I put. But though I turned my back on him, my hand never let go. He is ivy woven in my soul. To deny him, was to deny myself.

Oh I tried to keep track of each every scar, but they all lead me back to the place we are. And it's perfect with you.

When every thought crumbled out of my mouth, I was every ruin crashing on the ground. He picked me up, placed a daisy in my hair. I have never felt safer on the edge of a cliff, with my legs dangling in the abyss yet to fill and the seas bursting with every fear about the night that I nearly lost him. ( Flashes of the battle come back to me in a blur. ) I really thought I lost him. .

“I speak too much.”

The back of my eyelids were my only solace before. Now there’s relief in the curve of his lips when he smiles, in the green of his eyes that turns up a shade lighter when I fill the blanks with words. He feels like a glorious sunrise, gardens soaked with flickers of light.

“I love hearing you talk.”

His time away inside his mind heaves on him, the time spent here does too. I would never blame him though. This beach looks like the perfect place to cry, with the heart-stopping waves of hurt and past screaming from its cript questioning every spoken word’s worth.

“I’m sorry for being away.”

I have lost the count of how many times that word has left his mouth. “Sorry.” But I wouldn’t console him, instead I would wave it away the only way I know how.

“Oh no, you didn’t. You know what I’ll have to do now.”

Will this be the last autumn we force on ourselves to birth anew? The moon shimmers above like never before, but the night whispers the very same tune:

And we're so alive, so alive.

We are soon vacating next to this guy that is summer and orange touch in his pale skin. I have noticed the way he was looking at him the last time we went, in roses growing out of ice frozen ground. And aren’t we all hearts stitched to the sounds of dreams, despite of the hauntings, despite of the nightmares? We’ll leave an ode to past silences in auroras and sad prose.

Your hand was the one I reached for all throughtout this Great War.

An interlude, broken rush.

Breath taken, world shaken.

‘Tell me about that time you felt lost, that time you thought you weren't coming back from.’

“It was not that long ago, though it does feel like there was a lifetime broken in between months, and then silence, that one can make any second feel like an eternity, you know. Helplessness is a treacherous thing, and so the light that you could believe it is the end of a tunnel, it's actually a fracture in the darkness having illusions playing in. I sold my soul to the Devil then, but I felt no warmth. I had my voice back though, and I felt. . I felt that was enough.”

‘This is when you started singing again?’

“I know I am smiling, the melodies do that to me. I knew I wasn’t healing, but I was breathing out lyrics. He was looking at me, he was always looking at me. He was one in the crowds but I would be able to find his set of eyes in them with such ease. His presence never got to unsettle me, not like his absence started to.”

‘And now you can’t sing again.’

I rise from my seat then. This is ridiculous. I have never needed a therapist before, or well, never actually admitted I needed one in the past. Kim has been headstrong in bringing me to this stranger to hear me talk about. . . I don’t even know what I’m talking about. Every word I weaved sounded as nonsensical as when I thought it in the middle of the night and came back with no conclusion myself.

“Yes, I cannot sing again.”

He nods, pushing his glasses up his nose. He didn’t make a face when I mentioned the ‘Devil’, nor asked me further why and how he made such change in me when he appeared in the first place. It was night, and he plucked me from the sea of people as one does a flower that catches your attention out of a whole field that blooms about the same way, or so I thought. I guess this man thinks it is some internal dilemma, and I am just words away from some mundane realization that I have been the one keeping me from my dreams all along. I laugh, bitterly, to this place, to the Sun creeping through the naked windows, to my own mess.

‘There’s people worried about you.’

People, couldn’t be more than the amount of fingers in one hand. I walk towards the wall that holds all his diplomas in Psychology, and photos of people that, I suppose, he has ‘saved’ with his insisting questioning.

“There’s always been people worried about me.”

I feel coldness, the kind you feel in your whole body and makes you believe that instead of flesh and bones, you are made of ashes and frozen blood. And that’s it, no regrets, no second-guessing, absolutely nothing else.

“I believe I’m nothing without music.”

That is my only truth, though something else has been building in between every note. My hands rest on the back of the chair I was just sitting on minutes ago before I look into the eyes that are a similar shade to his, black, but not quite.

“And I believe you have no answers for this.”

The leather reluctantly gives in the way my nails sink in it, just like every joint in between bones to the hollowness coiling around and about. There is something pressing in this nothing, like an omen echoing in every corner, and about to fracture me whole the more I acknowledge it. I feel linked to him in ways I can't explain, and I know. . I know something is wrong.

“It's him. I need to find him.”

I've been sobering up from his rush for months, and though I'm aware his art is damnation and this distance could mean maybe one day I would be free from his hold, I would always rather the flames of his Hell than the reality that is ever so willing to turn me into dust.

Let me murmur softly, until the song starts again.

Solo: In a Week.

Death always wants more death. Its webs are never full, and so they expand —larger than Heaven, deeper than Hell.

I knew that when my time came around, I was not going to be laid gently in the dark cold earth, though I hoped to find peace, or any semblance of it, in the familiarity of the hunger with which the insects would feast on me.

‘Connor’

Death was supposed to be inevitable. Nothing could have been done differently, nothing could have been said differently that would have spared me to meet my fate that night, in the solitude of my apartment with the lights off because I was looking through the glass walls and the fluorescent nothings of the nightly cityscape. Funnily enough, as I turned around, I couldn’t stop asking myself about every decision I ever made, and find out how I did not regret making absolutely any of them, not even one.

He was another ghost stepping out of the corner he was hiding in, barely casting a shadow. I could almost hear the darkness’ greedy ticking stretching with the echo of my name, as if it were savoring every pound of flesh that it was coming to collect with him before its teeth even grazed my pulse. Then he pulled the trigger.

The pain was unbearable at first, scorching the flesh of my chest and lingering in my ribcage like the omen of something worse to come than the shroud of silence I was supposed to be covered with next. With the energy I could muster, I grabbed my gun from the holster at my hip, but I was shot again before I could fire it. My back finally collapsed against the wall and my body slid down to the floor like an useless handful of bones.

Moving turned painful, trying to breathe became excruciating, but I knew that if I relaxed my body then, I wouldn’t find my way back. I brought my hand over one of the wounds as I felt the coldness gradually taking over, and moved my gaze to the blood coated palm: I was death-stained and bleeding. It felt as if I were to wear my insides out soon enough. It was horror, I was.

‘Are you afraid to die, connor?’

No. I only have people left to take with me.

He kicked the gun farther away from my hand, and though many would have been laughing if they were him, there was something solemn in his quiet —as if this moment was something bigger than himself, planned to be done for quite some time, in the name of someone else.

‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know this day would come.’

There was smoke coming out the barrel, and I forced myself to look higher, match the voice with the face. Even in that moonless night, there was no mistake who he was brother of. I always believed she looked like a descendant of the moon itself, and so did he.

“This should give you all the points you’re missing with your Dad.” No semblance of a smile. There no joke —not for him. “And still, it won’t be enough, Filou.”

He left me with my words, choking on them actually, with a bloodstained froth that formed at the corners of my mouth the more I tried to laugh about it. My white shirt was soaked with the blood that oozed out of me, but it was nothing compared to the pool that was already forming beneath me.

My eyelids were about to give in when I met him, when his shadow fell over me in a fracture of time and indifference to everything else this world was ruled by.

‘So this is the famous Connor Volek.’

I would sport a “fuck off” if I weren’t suffocating with the smoke of my own destruction clinging to my nostrils, and the smell he brought with him —putrid, like the one you find in the waiting room outside a morgue, with flickering fluorescent lights and fake empathetic lines. There was also something defeaning about his presence, like the reverberations of a gong struck a long time ago to warn something or celebrate the departure of it, I couldn’t decide which one of the two.

He rolls his head around on his shoulders to crack his neck, once on either side before kneeling down. He was stepping on my blood and I didn’t even know his name.

“Who the fuck are you?”

‘You know, very few souls are worthy to come seeing them myself.’

I was as surprised to realize I could laugh, enough to let know my point and then burst into a fit of coughing because of it. My vision started dimming in the half-light, but I would give it to life and its twisted humor even in my last seconds in it.

“So you’re the Devil?”

‘I like what you have been doing, and your work isn’t done.”

His eyes resemble mine in a way: dark brown with pupils as black as the coffee I drink cold every morning, set under a dark fringe of thick lashes. For a moment, it looked like we were made from the same mold, and it made me sick. It was like having a part of me finding itself amused with my own misery.

“I don’t do group work”

‘I wasn’t asking.’ A breathless scoff seemed to take the last of air in my lungs, but I still could hear him. ‘It’s not your time to die.’

His touch was a shock of energy, tendrils of fire coiling up my spine, boiling my blood, and forcing pressure into my mind. I was a mask, someone else was looking through my eyes. And I was groaning out.

I thought that when my time came around, there was going to be the cool breeze and green leaves above me. But I’m laying instead in this mockery of brown earth with an unkindness of ravens feasting on memories and making them their own instead.

“Everyone is dead.” I had searched for answers and I had gotten them. Though the first lead got buried in someone’s graveyard of dreams and I had to keep looking for them other ways.

.

I would never understand Dante’s perseverance no matter how many times I let the ringtone of my phone die out with his calls, nor his trust on me to come for help, out of all the people he knew. He was next to me, and I was holding the gun with the blackbird clasping wings engravement around the grip. I convinced myself that the noise was what I needed and that was the reason why I was pushing the barrel against the door to a mystery he asked me to solve with him. But I had made of this inception my home, and my gravity was centered in the reality I chose. No, I didn't need the noise. That’s not why I followed him.

.

‘It might be a different circle of Hell. But tell me, Connor, are we really fighting different demons?’ I saw the flames inside her eyes the clearest then, the ashes of a past that both of us had been trying to escape from our whole lives. I knew that for her to accept the job I offered her, become the smoke and mirrors so no one can see through at was actually happening behind, she must had been at least as half broken as I was. She was already too much into the abyss though, that started believing our demons were alike, and the thought of it made me want to vomit, because in the maze of this life, she could never be as lost as me. No, she couldn’t be. “We may be fighting some battles, Kiara, but your demons and mine, they will never be the same.”

.

Burying a brother was tough, the fear of burying the second had me on an edge that I fought within my mind and forced me to shake hands with enemies for a while. Death loved to watch my madness unravel, so I was unbothered in polished silver and whites, refusing to leave flowers upon anybody’s tomb, watch wreaths of silence wither over any funeral grounds, and taste half-hearted eulogies on the tip of my tongue. “You’re in Hell with me, Roman. You’ll be dead for everyone else.” He came in a moment I needed a gun and he was hollow enough to lodge bullets in my name inside his chest and not to ask at who he would be firing.

.

She is just a little girl, I thought the very first time I saw her, but even when I had her stricken against the wall and my fingers wrapped tightly around her neck, her flame refused to go out. She could burn me if I let her, I heard every part of her brawling beneath: ‘Let go of me.’

The folder with the names and pictures of every vampire and witch I was giving her to kill was laying on the floor. I had reasons to believe one of them killed my family in revenge for what has been done to them generations ago by the Augustine Society. It didn’t matter I owed one of them for my brother’s life, I wanted each and every one of them gone.

“You don’t, and I use my resources to find your sister only to kill her myself. You are doing this for me, Stella. Everyone is going to.” She tried to push me back, but I pressed harder. She spat at me though, and I let her body collapse to the ground.

They say Hell is paved with good intentions, then hers and mine, were a bloody town of them.

.

The first time I saw her, I swear I thought I dreamed her.

‘My father didn’t raise a naive mine, nor to trust men who call me “dove.”’

I had become as consumed by the moon that I’d forgotten the Sun and every star out there. I cared more for the beads giving away the hell’s work sliding down the curves of her body, for the euphoric tint of red on her cheeks that spread down to her chest. If there was something lurking in the depths of my mind, feeding me lies, it started to stagger with the rapture of light that came with her.

It didn’t matter she falsely claimed ready to erase me with one sweep of her fingers across my collarbones, to tear me apart like a page and watch me disappear into dust, and she didn't. Instead, she inhaled me into her lungs and exhaled her words to weave them with mine. She saw every scar and souvenir as a word of poetry, and in return I evoked the blood moon for every sin we confessed that night and carved since into skin. The marks of her teeth, the warmth of her lips enclosing my fingers, I hoped they lingered. I hoped they tainted me like the dried ink on my neck and the stories that lied there beneath the flesh that no one dared to read.

“Do you think I’ll rub off on you?” She got into my bloodstream, and to be honest, I’m glad she found me in the dark and asked if she could stay.

.

.

Through my eyes, he saw her, moonlight and honey, and salivated reminiscing of a taste.

“Get out”

Inside my mind I felt something cracked, like a bone fracturing for the pressure.

‘No, I actually like it here.’

He plunged his blazing hands into my chest then, tearing through the tissue, collecting both bullets and ripping them out of me with one eager pull. I couldn’t hear my own screams. I felt they were being swallowed by this growing void within.

His hand slid to the nape of my neck, and whispered: ‘Now, breathe’

On my hands and knees, lungs filled as if it were the first time, no coughs. There was color back in my face, and my wounds were sealed shut.

Luna.

I said her name, and he made me slither back to the darkness which he told me I’d forgotten it was home all along.

‘Connor’,

But my time actually never came, neither did Death. You know what is worse than being dead? Being alive inside the corpse someone else also claims as his own.

‘Connor, are you okay?’

I’m on my desk, she has settled on my lap and her featherlike touch from the scruff of my cheeks to the curve of my lips has me drunk to the rim. ‘whisper, my fallen, I hear you’. Does she? I don’t remember how I’ve gotten here or how many days it has been since. . since. ‘Look right into the eyes of this abyss, let your light in.’

‘You’ve been acting different for a week.’

If the Devil has had its say, I was not worthy of the memo.

Solo: Once upon the Garden.

‘𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐢𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐰 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐮𝐧𝐰𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐥𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐰𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬.’

Words. I have lost count of the amount I have threaded of them among the years, the amount I have also let fall asleep under the covers of skin and roots of flowing veins. .

A heavy crow perches on my parents’ gravestone, gnawing at words still hanging on the pen that the paper patiently waits to take. The feathered 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 screeches, looking at me in omens of past clinging to the present, and promises of hauntings weaving heavy in the fog that it brings. The loud grief is stirring the calm sensation the leather biding of my journal was giving me, and I flick one of my hands as I stagger forward to drive it away.

‘Shoo.’

The last echoes of its cawing stay a moment longer before the first feather starts levitating right in front of me, soon enough there’s a floating rain of them, falling in reverse —a feathery touch meant for stained eyes, white serenity all around me like clouds reminding a dove about the possibilities of the skies.

“It’s impossible, and it’s true.’” She says.

Impossible, I’ve come to learn that word holds no meaning in our world, not anymore.

We exist, in this magic but broken and tragic place. And I keep reminding myself not to think of death, to dust myself off these ashes. But my aching skin still remembers the truth that pressed deeper against it until it bled, my bruised knees still remember the deadly weight that forced them to kneel until I wept. It was harder to spread my wings after the accident, to remember the melody I was singing, the novel I was writing. I was following ellipses, looking forward to the next sight of a word, but everything in between haunted me still, and I felt like a fading song, beautifully unfinished.

My name doesn’t feel so tainted when cradled by his voice though, as if tragedy hasn’t already claimed everything of me—like my air, like the blood flowing through my veins, like my flesh. My pen never choked at the thought of Stefan, and in the shaky silence of my breathing, I walked the bridge of that reality above all silences.

‘You won’t be sad forever, Elena.’ His words only start ringing true now. . I know of blooms in gardens because of forests with him.

I’ll spend forever wondering if you knew I was enchanted to meet you.

I am feathers and petals falling into reflections of dewy grass and tinges of indigo violets on the other side of a sea of ripples. And I follow the scent of tea, night-colored liquid dreams with undertones of smoke, while walking a tapestry of evergreens and listening to the raven's last song: I'd be home with you.

It’s been a moment. It’s been a lifetime —not mine.

I have been reading so quietly there, searching for the sounds and silences that the pages have caught: his inflections, the places he stopped at, the lines that he repeated —the favorite verses that held his attention in between the glances when there weren’t any words.

He is the bluebird by the windowsill, but I’ve been the one signing sonnets to him in metaphors.

It feels weird after all this time, to still feel wondered by this magic. But there are feathers in my room because of it, candles lit for every drop of red that has been cried a river for after, and ink splattered all over my desk and in each one of my pages —with ceaseless blood scribbles of grief and loss.

There’s gold on today’s rays of sunlight, kissing my skin as the moving clouds hint the passing time and the wishes hanging on the stars to come again in not so many hours from now. I know no delays though, no rush. .

I say I write to purge some things out. I’m a graveyard girl escaping the ghost of memories while scribbling the tales about them after all. So I flip the pages back to the first one, written three years ago, with the winds of change playing with my hair and blushed petals sprinkling like snow:

𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐃𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐲,

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝, 𝐚 𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐲𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐈 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐬.

‘𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭.’ —𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧.

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫. 𝐒𝐨 𝐈 𝐬𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐝𝐨 𝐬𝐨, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 ‘𝐈’𝐦 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐞’ 𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠.

𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲-𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞. 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞, 𝐞𝐚𝐭, 𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩, 𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐮𝐩, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐨 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐥 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐢𝐭’𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞.

‘𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐲? 𝐁𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐝? 𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞?’, 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐚𝐬𝐤 𝐦𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐝𝐚𝐲. ‘𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐯𝐞?’ 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞. 𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭.

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐚𝐦 𝐈?

‘𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭? 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐥𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬?’

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐚𝐧’𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝, 𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞, 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧.

‘𝐈’𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞, 𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐢𝐬𝐞, 𝐢𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞. 𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝?’

‘𝐎𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭.’

‘𝐈𝐭 𝐢𝐬.’

𝐈 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐦𝐲 𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬. 𝐖𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐈 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭.

‘𝐖𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐲. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐝𝐨.’

𝐌𝐲 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐤𝐧𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐭𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐭 𝐬𝐨 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞.

𝐀 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐟 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫, 𝐈’𝐦 ‘𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞’ 𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐥 𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬 ‘𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐦𝐲 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐲𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥’ 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞. 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧’𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐫, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐚𝐠𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐬𝐲𝐦𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐞 —𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧’𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐝, 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐦𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧.

𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐭 𝐉𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐚, 𝐈 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐬 𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐝. 𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞, 𝐈 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐝.

𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞, 𝐢𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐢𝐭? 𝐔𝐧𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐥𝐲, 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜.

𝐀 𝐜𝐚𝐫 𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐦𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐰.

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡, 𝐈 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡, 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐈 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞.

𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐲, 𝐈 𝐛𝐢𝐝 𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐮 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐧.

As nature mourns with the song of birds in this graveyard, I taste the dream that blooms in my mouth like a flower. It soon smiles in clearer skies and a lilac taken from a bouquet tucked against someone’s chest.

You’re a bluebird, darling, tearing through the darkness of my days.

“Hey,” It’s all he says in a voice I recognize, as if I have heard it about a thousand times before in a garden I visited more than once, and between stories I would get lost in if only to forget for a moment mine. It opens wide like raven’s wings wrapping around my soul, and I breathe into that esse of afterlife and all its wondrous variations when my eyes lift to meet his with a smile.

“We should get out of here. The graveyard, I mean.”

A raindrop lands on my cheek, then another, and soon there is a soliloquy against the fading grays of concrete, on us and all around us.

‘We definitely should.’

And it’s raining, our footsteps are as light as the murmur of tales of souls intertwined where the figurations of time are abandoned and unlocked doors to long lost places are found. It sounds like fiction, but it’s my fact.

𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐰𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞.

‘I feel like rain,’ I said once, ‘like the splattered teardrops of the skies kissing tragedy against the pitch-black gravel, like the state of water that longs to freefall and be cradled on a pair of hands turned cups and be gulped instead.’

It’s only now when I realize the helplessness I was stuck in, the ways I practically wished to disappear.

We’ve found shelter under the sea of leaves of a tree outside the graveyard where a large bench is, and his gaze are blues crashing a familiar shore. Nodding to words said another time, he breathes out a laugh before stretching out his hand to me. As if following in complicity, the dotted silver threads start turning into a softer and more delicate embroidery of nature that soon promises to fade away.

“There’s a place I want to show you.”

My gaze is attuned to his mouth, hung on every lyric, poem and artwork it has consumed.

𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐞.

The stroll does not feel long even though the graveyard is outside of town. We listen to the soft tap of droplets upon everything they touch as we walk. It resembles time ticking —passing seconds, that contrary to any belief, when you want to tempt them to go slower, they only go faster.

The stories of friends that never left and friends that life took away, the songs of deathless love on a vinyl that still plays, and the devotion to his favorite works of art climb like ivy claiming a house that’s far from abandoned. In exchange, I talk of the times I would open the windows to winter’s worst and speak my truth, and how the hum of hope clung heaven-tender in a place where the spirit meets my bones, far from ink-stained fingers and papercuts, and closer to soft-spoken blossoms of gold quenching my soul’s thirst.

It feels like a ride train where we swap seats in the middle, but no one really wants the window. We are tracing this moment, falling forever instead.

The bell above the threshold in the bookshop chimes in tales of deliriums and nostalgia soothed by a kettle of warmth —a spell you breathe to the depth of your lungs and take you places you've never known. The shelves are covered in ivy, and it appears to have crept in between every universe too —as if cradling each book and their magic— turning the place into a blooming dreamscape for the sleepless eyes and weathered bones.

I am fingertips tracing through the bookshelves, over the leatherback spine of many stories written, as if brushing the gossamer of dreams away from the one who tends to them. I am quiet steps taken on the haunted floorboards walking closer to him, walking the aisles and wondering about the worlds carefully tucked in them. I am the shy glances from afar watching him flip the pages and leave stories unfinished because something else has been in his mind.

I tip the first book off of the shelf and I can’t help feeling like a book myself —a collection of metaphors in lilac-colored bindings, inked across poetry-kissed pages, earth’s brown cover, and an engraving of blues of the same color of his eyes.

𝐈 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐈 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲.

If I were to break this story down into the simplest of terms, it would be as simple as this: a girl composed of diary entries walks into a bookstore owned by a man haunted by the same guilt. They talk about everything that makes them feel, and they fall in love.

‘You don’t need to wake up, Jackson.’ I whisper as soft as the breeze that joins gardens’ chatters about reveries coming to life, as the affections threaded in someone's hair when resting on a lap beneath a dark shade of twilight.

I found you, and you found me.

‘You’re awake.’

Solo: Be Kind.

Yes, I wanna believe that I don't have a bad bone in my body but the bruises on my ego make me go wild, wild, wild.

It is another rendez-vous with the stars, sitting by the window with my wine hued acoustic guitar right next to me. It reflects the soft moonlight and shadows in a silent dance many times I have lost myself in, though I am left to watch the show and not to be part of it tonight. My fingers have given up sliding from one string to another to create melodies, yet even in their absence, there's a feeling tucked in between every note refusing to be ignored. It’s there since I wake up every morning, like something is not right, and doesn't take me too long to remember what it is. Silence is as wise, I’ve come to know.

Someone gotta know that even when I’m stone-cold, I’m sorry. Tell me why I gotta be so outta my mind sometimes.

Yes, it’s another night of countless verses scattered across my desk —written lyrics scratched over. They say writing can take you places, but what to do when the place they take you is somewhere you don’t want to be?

A crumpled-up piece of paper hits his head, frustration getting the best of me, once again. ‘It's bullshit.’

“You know there is never any pressure on this, right?” He catches it before hitting the floor, straightening the paper to read the lyrics of a song I have been trying to write for weeks now. He wears a smile while at it, and I'm reminded how much of a fan he is of life's unexpected beats and surprises. It's as if he loves getting caught in the stripped version of his heart's song —no preparations, no effects on notes to hide behind.

Choking on my fears, I fail to see who is right there.

“It’s not like our five fans will tear us apart if we don’t come up with something new this summer.” I would give it no pennies of silver, no second look at the scribbles, but his eyes linger on the paper as if it were one of the polaroid pictures he would admire for hours after the sun has set. It’s a moment before he tilts his head, and sends it back with a laugh.“Come on, I’ve seen worse.”

I would roll my eyes, aiming the trash can this time. ‘It’s bullshit.’

I don't know why I hide, and close my eyes, mess up and lie.

Ezra. I met my new neighbor one afternoon, smoking a blunt of weed while perched on the garage with its door opened wide. He was fifteen and his parents out of town, and he looked so free then, with his guitar and drums tucked inside, and whatever wars completely out of mind.

I couldn’t remember the last time I felt the peace he wore in his face that day, the last time I found myself breathing without double-guessing and breaking into a havoc that had cost me two guitars so far.

I guess I forgot I can cry, always confide, that I can be kind.

We would check bands that already made it sometimes. There, up on the stage, nothing else existed. They were one with their guitars, shutting the world out one gig at a time. We were just starting to work on covers and the occasional song one of us would come up with.

‘Call her.’, There were very few times Ezra would actually let the anxiety take the spotlight. He wasn’t always talking, but yes, his quietness was too loud, even more to my ears.

“Leave it.”

‘Or you can give her a visit. I know you’re worried about Eden’. They were never that close before the divorce of their parents, but something held when they were forced to live separately. Little do I know of that redheaded girl now, her freckled face and her trademark smile. But he shrugs me off, as if it didn't matter.

‘You’re being a coward.’ I fucked up my filter a long time ago. When it’s back for moments, it’s a stone I can’t swallow down and nothing can make it out. ‘Sometimes there are no second chances, you know? Sometimes shit you can’t actually change come and hit you right in the balls.’

I need the upperhand 'cause in the past, I had to prepare every time. And I know if I’m gonna fight, I gotta do it for myself.

My eyes were swollen the day I saw him stoned. Every weekend was like that after the winter that cancer took my mother away a couple months before. Whatever he saw within his haze and made him reach out to offer me ‘a hit’, I have stayed for. And I discovered a blend of highs masked in melodies and disarrayed constellations that resembled us in more ways than one.

“You’re so sweet sometimes, a sweet meadowlark.”

Loss, loss does not rhyme. It is not words you can use to purge feelings out, and scream with a few notes being played behind. It is a feverish hold around your throat, and molten prayers streaming in red down the corners of your mouth. She kept telling me how the music saved her in times of need, yet the calluses of my fingers from every day she taught me to play the guitar and each one after, bleed the very same color. I'm still looking forward to find a different shade.

‘Change it to ‘screaming’ and I’ll take it.’

He raised the beer and motioned to take mine, and as if we were toasting, the new nickname was sealed with a clink.

“The stars will fall from their place in jelaousy, but Hell, it does fit.”

A sip, and then two more. And I started on singing I can be kind to the people I love.

‘You might want to start reconsidering me at the mic.’

He laughed, the kind that had his chest shaking and his arm over his mouth trying to hold back. At times, I can’t speak. But for my friend, I do sing.

“And keep that gift from the world? Never.”

Beaten down, with bruises we still not talk about: We laugh.

𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐨: 𝐅𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐝

These shallow waters never met what I needed.

I’m letting go, a deeper dive.

Eternal silence of the sea. I’m breathing, alive.

I follow the sound carried by the oceanic breeze, the soft symphony of endless waves as they caress the shores of her lover and return home in dulcet whispers and rippling sonnets, high in the earthly rendez-vous. My eyes don’t linger on the dusky tapestry of lilacs and reds to the hinting hues of twilight blues, don’t either in the unlocked doors of the beach house as I make my way through each one of them.

My eyes are looking for her, and they finally find her, vulnerable in the dashboard confessional of the sea and plagued with thoughts as heavy that could sink her to the bottom of the ocean if she dares diving in. I don't need to check, I know her feet are bare, her toes buried in the sand and no sight of shoes nearby.

My fingers open like a sunflower stretching towards the departing sun before tugging on the end of her skirt for her to pick me up. My mom and I both look like lost stars —specks of dust exiled from their own galaxy— chasing away the dying light with the familiar coastal lullabies.

“Are you okay, mommy?”

The grief has turned the shade of her eyes a tone darker, and I’m taken by the suffocating need to have my fingers twirling around her threads of cinammon hair, warming every bit of coldness that lodges within her with caresses. I can’t help seeing my own reflection in her eyes when she looks at me though, funeral pyres behind smoked mirrors, every second tasting more of the same ashes. She doesn’t pick me up, and I want to scream as loud as a six year old can —𝗜 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀 𝗵𝗶𝗺 𝘁𝗼𝗼, but I know, after a year of my father’s death, her touch would still be as elusive as a four-leaf clover, and I'm to be wandering endlessly after her as she never finds again the only one feeling that once tethered her to reality.

𝐘𝐨𝐮, 𝐝𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐚 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞, 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐠𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐚 𝐟𝐨𝐫: 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐭, 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫.

“Lu. Lu Marie, come here.”

Every memory of me revolves around the ocean, like some infinite loop I don’t feel myself wanting to leave anytime soon. Sea-woven, I am dancing to the rhythm of time tangled in its notes, ebbs and flows, over and over. .

“Look at these seagulls. Take this.” My grandma waves at me from afar with a bag of popcorn on her free hand and a smile as sweet as the candy that they usually make them with. “Feed them.” I don’t feel the wounds from when life pulled me apart, even though I bled with the urgency to give everything that was mine to sneak through the cracks of the mosaics of my mother’s soul every time.

She’s gone now —the sea cradling the ashes of her sleep forevermore— and my grandmother has taught me to laugh again, to be one with that breath of life and the colors of the fading sun visible in the beads of diamonds shining on my damp skin.

We are possibilities like the sand that knows the passage through the narrowing glass means only seconds away from another turn, my mother used to tell me when I was a child. The words knock me off balance and I am caught in the tide then —I can feel my lifetime of struggles as seaweeds tangled in ribs, but it’s these moments filling my lungs the ones that remind me of the surface when in the crushing darkness, of the promise of sunlight out of the sea of grief.

Lu.

In the uneven silence of my breathing, the seas recoil but I’m still chasing the waves that take with them what’s been lost and what will be lost, too.

Lu.

Her voice burns in the corner of my eye before my name echoes again but outside my dreams this time.

Lu.

It leaves her like a secret but tastes like an oath that resonates in every inner whirlwind of me. Everything turns still, and I wonder how many times she called my name because when our eyes meet, hers linger with a feeling I can’t begin to describe. I manage the hint of a smile, soaked in nostalgia, for all the reveries she’s painted only for me. ‘Yes?’

“You have your mother’s eyes, drowning in longing.”

It’s everything you wanted.

It’s everything you don’t.

“There’s a lot you don’t know.” She lets out a painful sigh that blows and dies out as my cheek is cradled by one of her loving hands. Her eyes look so full of answers and I can’t help but walking on the edge, wanting to fish at least one of them.

It’s one door swinging open,

It’s one door swinging close.

‘What do you mean?’ My hand cradles hers, the blankets she’s covered to the chest with have never felt so cold. She dropped my grandfather's last name after his death. I never met him, I only know he died shortly after my mother was born. She is always been my Nori, Nori Locke, on bed for the last time. The doctor says it will be last time..

Some prayers find an answer,

Some prayers never know.

“What you’re missing is right in front of you..”

She gives me her pendant, the heart of the sea burning on the palm of my hand —haunting blues over softer pinks— while the waves crash outside in some agony I could only compare to the one happening inside my ribcage. We are grieving, again.

I have been an abyss that echoes my every chapter that ended abruptly —beautifully unfinished like Atlantis under the sea.

Holding on..

I remember him, golden drops of sunlight over pages, novels of doubts over promises not even made yet. I remember his subtle frown of stains that never go away and the smile of ivory that he didn’t let see before walking away. And I remember the waves on the other side, the spirits of the ocean dancing with the wind, their white hands urging me to come kiss the foam out of their lips.

Letting go..

“I’m so sorry, child.”

What do we know of freedom? I am living in dreams so tender that are perdition at the seams.

I saw you and there is no way to unsee you, and I feel you calling to me. Under the bright but faded lights, sunsets of gold, you've set my heart on fire.

𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐨: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥 𝐈 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰.

𝙁𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙝𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠: 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙚𝙚 𝙮𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙨 𝙖𝙜𝙤.

‘What’s going to happen to them, to Joe?’

Our identities were already compromised, our last of many operations was lost along with the package we were asked to deliver. Yet, he only called me.

“You are not supposed to actually care about any of them.”

He doesn’t even look at me while he types, I’m guessing, the final instructions to disappear any loose ends we could possibly leave behind. “You didn’t even give birth to those kids.”

We were a show, a front, a staged family so that the fewer number of suspicions were targeted at us during and after the missions were done.

“Someone is going to take your place and you will be under the radar until I call you again. That’s all you need to know.”

If you paid enough attention, you could notice the bitterness clinging still to every word leaving Frank Volek's mouth —the ruins of a society undone and that almost left him bankrupt if it weren’t because he completely abandoned every moral to keep his company afloat. 𝘍𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘴. He would spit the name with hatred between late night sips, remembering the project was canceled 2 years after it started when his partner had his second daughter and realized maybe they were crossing a line they shouldn’t.

I was the one out of the five girls from the program that he continued by himself —orphans taken by the age of 12, put through strenuous daily training, hand-to-hand combat and weapons training, including even tactical skills. We were innocence destroyed for a haunting dark film to trick an audience, instrumental to secure some families’ influence with chaos orchestrated by our hands between scenes. I am his only trained undercover operative left now, his clandestine work of art working his will through fictions.

He looks at me then, calling me by my real name, letting me know his chains are woven within my bones, his intentions written in the maps of my veins. It’s the only thing I know. I’m a folder with it, my picture, my year of birth 1986, and novels of blacked-out lines bleeding reds.

“You can leave now, Nina.”

𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝘿𝙖𝙮.

“They are finishing the research in the next couple of months.” His breath is expensive liquor wrapping around my neck as his unwelcome lips settle to kiss the unbothered pulse beneath skin. I wouldn’t need to say a thing, my lack of movements is enough to have the beast rattling the bars of the cage I’ve locked myself in. His mouth is a loaded gun that shoots me in the back of my head.

“At least fake you are happy to see me.” He turns me around to face him, his hands dig on my sides with the demand that has grown inside his pants and is pressing against me. I have still the knife in my hand, the slices of potatoes on the chopping board unattended now.

He is as predictable as his finger on the trigger ready to fire without a second thought, like the reflection in a mirror staring at the depictions of someone else's works.

‘I don’t need to do anything.’ One of his hands squeezes my cheeks while the fingertips of the other one burn by the wrist until I lose hold on the grip. He dips down for my collarbone —smokes out my dark through his teeth, turns my wine into simple water with his lips.

“What happened with that first night’s spark?” Connor said Time to play house again —I should have known better than to believe the sickening play would end with his father's death. It started under neon lights, but then it all got dark. I’ve got bullet holes in every part of me, and only a wish on my lips: I want him in ichor, hazed with the half-lidded contentment he finds in his loud and cheap thrills while I tear him open just for fun of it.

‘You threatened me with the only thing I have, Sebastian.’ He's not my son but —

Their news got buried under many others. The murders of every member in the Volek family except his youngest son in a span of months was the only thing people would talk about for the longest while. The names of the life I left behind were barely the smoke of a wax candle that went out: Joe and Nathalie Madden, parents of three children, found dead in their home. Luke, his older son, of then 16, gone for a year and possible suspect of the homicides. Stella and Amber, 15-year-old twins, missing. Many theories circulated around, and each one of them died carelessly, for everyone but one. Sebastian, the new operative I was sent to the field with, had dug out my past and started holding it against me in the present: Luke, who found out about me, made his way to Dogma and I still have contact with —the closest to a family bond, the closest to normalcy I’ve ever felt.

He kisses me then, wide eyed, high on the control of even the things I say. He nestles himself in between the paradise that makes his world implode. He needs my body when his fire is cold, and takes it like he’s got nothing left to lose, to use, to do. Fuck his shade of blue, I push him away —not before leaving the metallic taste in his mouth to remember me by— every other tragedy in the world would do.

I’m only a conversation with a stranger he actually barely knows. I've tasted the venom on his tongue, the rivers of crimson within his touch, the eclipse of my own light in the bad habits that led him to me.

When he closes the door behind him, I’m sneaking into endless springs, the murmur of a brook at eventide, the ripples by a nook where two lovers hide.

Help, I lost myself again, but I remember you:

I escape from Hell at moments for the miracle of soft skin, red lips and strawberry fragrance of luscious gardens’ bliss. She’s the song this robin sings, the ivy I am tangled around. My darkness unveils all the secrets that my starlight doesn’t even have to ask about.

Retrace my lips, erase his touch.

I’m unfaithful to the devil I know.

It’s all too much for me.

The devil I know.

Watering the grave of my hundredth death, I wonder if roses would bloom again.

Solo: Reveries of Saturn.

Small marble balcony, I’m lost in the current like a priceless wine. I swim in the black seas of tempting oblivion as the moon does through the heavy clouds in tonight's sky. I hear the violins whispering from the inside and the soft rumor of the stars above humming in harmony to the peoples' wishes to wash away their sins in the apathetic shores of this charity ball.

That’s when he walks in, wearing midnight shades exactly when the clock strikes twelve.

‘The moon has been witness of so many wars.’ I recite the lines I learned specifically for this act. Moonlight mist, I’m looking at him sideways, and he barely moves as he fills on the blanks with a code only the person I am to meet and I should know.

“But none like the ones plotted in the dark.” He is soon leaning his side against the high-chest railing, facing me in silence for some seconds before offering a hand for a dance that was never planned. I couldn’t help but notice every detail of his face then, half kissed by the shadows, half by the lights from inside the ballroom. His hair is pushed back from his forehead and away from his pitch black mask; it isn’t done perfectly though, it looks rushed as it does the stubble that is poorly trimmed on his jaw. His eyes are as dark as the bottom of the ocean beneath thick lashes; bloodshot, those are the abysses inebriated with the color of war, high on the sound of the firing gun. The lower edge of his mask directs my attention to the shape of his lips then, parched to the point of bleeding, starving for something else—peace, is my only guess.

“May I have this dance?”

Steps inside, there are crimson red curtains as heavy as the secrets these people want to hide behind, chandeliers as bright as jewels upon golden threads that look like they are dreaming to kiss the ground.

These tales of masquerades go a long way back, souls wanting to be passed down like folk songs —their stories lasting for evermore— though their reality could not be more divorced from every feeling they preach in the first place. I can't help but wonder as we move to the center of the room, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘐 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘺 𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥. I’m silk and solar flares masked in glittering reds now —in family business while covered in pretty shiny lies.

His hands meet the curve of my back, just where fabric doesn’t cover skin and that’s where he lingers while mine settle on his shoulders with fingers coiling in the fabric.

“You are not what I expected.” We are soon dancing to the song on the background, swaying into the night while he’s holding me for show.

‘Did you expect a mysterious man as yourself?’ I nudge him to push me away and spin me around to have a quick scan on the surroundings before coming back to his arms. ‘I’ll have your suggestion delivered for the next time.’

“Next time.” He quotes me with the corners of his mouth crooking in a grin far from genuine —foreign in the way his features don't give in naturally to it.

I slid the note papa gave me inside the pocket of his suit when finishing the dance. His fingers graze down my forearm to take hold of my elbow then —urging me to linger— as his eyes suddenly take notice of something above my shoulder and snort in a mix of irony and disbelief.

“Tell your dad it’s too late now. We are closer than he thinks.”

His gaze meets mine while he cradles my chin with the thumb and forefinger of his free hand, pursuing the same sickening smile for my confused expression as he does for the audience.

“Send Luna my regards.”

It’s cold water against scorching skin, the threat sizzling to the bone, the nauseating shift of his nature behind the mask. My papa’s slurry last night’s words after one too many drinks echo in the back on my mind: 𝘏𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥. 𝘙𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥. 𝘚𝘵𝘶𝘱𝘪𝘥 𝘝𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘬𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘭.

‘How many times do you think you can escape death, Roman?’

I blurted, hoping to be right and the menacing flames in his voids of grey confirm I am. He closes distance to my ear to whisper and the dagger I have strapped against my thigh burns to claim a life —the show is over, we have burned the script to the ground.

“The times I’ll need to until I take with me everyone I want to.”

He is quick to leave like an actor sick of the stage, like a devil desperate to go back and live in his Hell. I’m about to do what I never do: follow, ask questions. But there’s a hand pulling me back, and I would have dismissed it and shrugged it off if it weren’t dragging me to a room far from the crowds and locking the door behind.

‘Samuel?’ I recognize him before he turns around to face me with no mask on, flooding my mind with so more many doubts than I had only a minute ago. We have met many times before, far from this scintillating material world and more on a cobblestone fated path to a Garden of Lights away from prying eyes.

“We don’t have so much time.” His voice sounds hoarse as if every word were stuck in his throat and had a hard time crawling their way up to his lips.

‘What are you doing here? You were in Rome, you are —’

Wine crushed, the rest of the sentence is caught by his mouth. Reality loses its meaning that very second, and the place is fragrant and silent —shattering this counterfeit of life in the intimacy of the lover I found in a sea of strangers, mortal as flesh and corrupted as blandly obvious fictions.

He cradles my face with an urgency that disarms me but it’s his breath what is holding me in place.

“I’m sure your papa suspects but the Voleks have plans. You have to keep away.”

I’m too dizzy in the rush but I blink a couple of seconds later. 𝘞𝘢𝘪𝘵. .

‘How do you know?’

“I’ve been following him. Aelia, listen to me. Tell me you’ll try to stay away.”

I nod at his pleading eyes before hands cling to the front of his shirt in a goodbye we can not put into words. He’s had whiskey —I taste it on his tongue— but night soon enough spills into a sobriety I am forced to shake in with the moist blush of my lips leaving his.

I still feel the heat radiating from his body when we part, when I move through the masses of faces, and staying to drive every thought, every plan I could have possibly made, away from my head.

After the flashes of some cameras down the stairs outside, I’m soon met by ‘my security’ or more accurately, the person that was sent to watch over me, when opening the door of my car to get in. I’m stopped on the spot this time though, like a sinner with handcuffs on my wrists after being caught in the act and every justification already scattered in fragments before leaving my mouth.

“I couldn’t see you for a moment. Where were you?”

‘The bathroom. Let go of me.’ His hold doesn’t leave, instead it tightens as if wishing to bruise skin until it bleeds reds. My eyes lock with his for silent threats but they are stopped by the fires of danger I never contemplated once before in them. He emphasizes every word and the air feels to be stolen right from my lungs.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

I’m fate drowned, cursed stars, shoved inside the car like ragdoll done with a scene.

What is happening?

Fingertips brush my lips while looking outside the car window. He’s looking for me, parting from the crowd but I’m angel wings custom stripped now.

How much I would give for another one of these violent delights even if it meant violent ends for both of us? 𝘏𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘺 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘪𝘯 —my selfish thought, my fatal weakness, but never my regret.

𝘔𝘺 𝘧𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭’𝘴 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦’𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵, 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘬.

And for a moment I imagine a world when I would stand bare, only flesh and bones and words exposed that I have buried within —trying to find corners in circles, trying to find escapes in dead ends.

Nowhere in this earth is home, I’m woven nightmares dreaming of freedom when my life is full of locks.

𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘭𝘦𝘵’𝘴 𝘳𝘶𝘯. 𝘓𝘦𝘵'𝘴 𝘳𝘶𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘮.

Solo: Within His Dreams.

His eyes are vibrant and scorching dark —cursing my name, wishing I stayed— with the aftermath of passion flames consuming in reds and saffrons any verdent recollection of innocence left in them. I licked off the morning dew from abysmal gardens when I set foot in the Salvatore Mansion back in 1864, and left a myriad of blood-drenched journal pages behind instead.

Velvet iron liquid still trickles down his neck in my mind, quenching my gnawing thirst as fangs sink in deep with his heart pounding close to an early grave. I was no nocturne creeping in the shadows and certainly never wanted his death, nor I ever expected his blood to taste like honey when taken from his vein. I pinch my lower lip and stifle back a laugh at the mockery of time, reminders cling there like drops from exchanges and promises made in the dark. They feel as if they happened yesterday, tangled in sheets in the middle of the night. Just like the shade of his eyes I miss that no longer is there, I have realized I can’t get rid of the nostalgia smeared on skin for the road not taken, the one that looks like we were both born to leave. And yet, I came back for him.

‘𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐝.’

I didn’t. I wanted his fingers fitting mine, his thoughts weaving a tapestry with the plans of mine only the conspiracing stars knew about. I wanted to run —with him— into the dark of the night, like a secret nobody would know but us. 𝘏𝘦'𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘮 𝘐 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘯𝘰𝘸?

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠!

His hatred is mine, lodged in my chest like a stake with my name he has carried for so long and I gladly claim it. For some reason I don’t imagine something more intimate than my blood dripping from his mouth —that hunger finally satisfied with the very first taste that drew him to unhinge his jaw and want to eat the world raw. His closure would drip off my body and be spattered on paper and bound in leather in poems with no rhyme. 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘳𝘵, 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘰𝘸.

Like an overripe fruit, I would also indulge shamelessly on the body blood-warm and sweet crushing of hope bleeding from his self-flagellation scars. I would take my time for my fingertips to roam up every inch of ivory of his spine to the hollow cage of ribs, take the ashes of past pain right from the inside and bring them back again and anew with smoke of roaring waves. I crave those red and black tongues of previous tales of war just the same, and I would tear his heart to taste them and lap my tongue at the excess.

We could eat each other up in this consuming madness, give into these deadly desires, and even be left starving for more flesh than the other can possibly offer.

I guess he wanted a better reason why I wasn’t in the tomb, waited for this story to have a plot twist of sorts, some backstory to fill the void that has grown over the years and claimed too many lives in the end; starting with his brother’s, with his. I didn’t want to have to haunt him, but what a ghostly scene. He walks alongside the same shade of jewels he bled for before as if they could tend his hungry and thirsty grounds. These roses and their thorns know them more than anyone else.

‘𝐍𝐨, 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐟𝐚𝐧, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞.’

Something kind of snapped, kind of cracked like dark tangled wood after a fire. I read it in his face, I am not that ‘angel’ for him anymore. I never compelled his love though. No matter the times he denies it, tries to cut deep and twist the blade waiting for pulsing sobs, I’m still the girl he once screamed out her name while chasing her in a maze of greens and now looks around to whisper it on down the way in knots of ichor under flesh. I’ve got a picture to burn. I have one foot in his grave and one in the mess he’s made.

His eyes are graveyard tales in the bottom of a lake, his memories floating rotting corpses begging to be taken away.

I am in flames.

He is frozen, drowning in the color of the eyes that have buried him.

And I gave him the bodybag. How’s that for a comeback?

𝙄𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙛𝙪𝙣𝙣𝙮 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙠 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙢𝙮 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙙, 𝙎𝙩𝙚𝙛𝙖𝙣. 𝙔𝙤𝙪’𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙚𝙭𝙞𝙡𝙚. 𝙒𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙪𝙥.

Solo: Living Hell.

What is a ghost?

Something dead that seems to be alive.

Something dead that doesn’t know it’s dead.

Sacrifice. How much of yourself can you give away and live with it before there’s nothing else left, before it’s some kind of murder?

I never imagined flowers upon my tomb, wreaths of silence over abysmal grounds and the taste of half-hearted eulogies on the tip of my tongue.

The sky was starting to taint as black as ink, and we were together within the whispering fields of stranger lands —telling tales of death and destruction in the voices of the ones that didn’t make it— with clothes and face in haunting greens, blood dripping from cuts and wounds, drenching fabric and leaving trails wherever we walked.

“Put a bullet through his brain.” One of us said. We were exhausted by this hate, by this bloodshed, by this Purgatory on Earth. The steel burned on my hand, muzzle against the enemy’s forehead, while he spitted venom as if he had been holding it back his whole life and would dissolve with the acid from the inside out otherwise. He was standing up, dirt and mud all over except for his eyes, black as voids, drunk with some different type of war. He was so resolved to be defeaning, I tried remembering other sounds before this madness instead: The ripping of a page, the burning of a cigarette, a flap of wings somewhere very different than these deserted wastelands.

In my hesitation, Connor took the gun from me, pushed me to go on and leave with the rest of the company to meet the helicopter about to land a few meters away from us.

“Leave. I’ll find you.”

‘I can’t do that.’ The enemy’s laughter leaving the caverns of his crooked mouth was a sinister wake up call. He pulled his shirt up with one hand —showing a fresh cut across his side and the corner of a device peeking out of the rushed stitching— and held a remote detonator in the other; thumb on the trigger, eyes on us.

And I don’t think, I move right where this man is, dismissing the hold from Connor on my elbow —the one I rip myself away from, dismissing the screams of my name. I drive myself with him inside the dilapidated building behind. One thumping sound to the ground, two beeps.

“ROMAN.”

No, I never imagined anything solemn would come after these modern thunders when I had been walking besides ghostly forms fallen and faded beneath many musty dawns. I actually always saw myself becoming one with the ghastly ruins —with my strenght shattered and my vision clouded to darkness in a dedicated rain of ashes— properly surrounded by funeral pyres for so many broken oaths. I hoped for that sickening downpour, for charred bones and a murder of crows exploding out of my head and into the sky.

The bomb blew up then, ripping screams out of each chest, blasting every nerve to bleeding veins for chaos’ last breath.

Life was always noise, maddening. .

Death is silence.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

They say there’s a crack in everything, explaining that is how the light gets in, but aren’t we too naive to believe that it is all it takes, that there’s nothing else out there waiting to do the very same? We are linked to a shadow since we are born. What if it is more darkness what sneaks in instead? What if the light does and we are showed all we didn’t want to see in the first place? With reddened hands I built a wall around and called it freedom, knowing very well that if the light ever did, the demons instead of crawling out in discomfort, would smile at me.

Waking up hurts, the weight of my own body feels to be crushing me as if I were a wreck of bricks and steel instead of flesh and bones; and even a single blink has the light puncturing my eyes with brightness as if looking right into the fucking sun. My throat feels so absurdly dry that I can’t help but trying clearing it up, only to give into a groan that tenses every muscle even more.

“That is all. You can leave now.”

I was sleeping in darkness before they dragged me out from under the debris I was supposed to be forgotten, and brought me here. Whoever that person he is talking to is, I could sense the hesitation in the breathing, in the way the presence lingered in the threshold for a moment too long.

“I said ‘that is all’, Rigel.”

That’s when she snorts, —she—. Her reaction feels nice like soothing rain over skin after years inside some abandoned house in the middle of nowhere.

“You are welcome, Volek.”

“I thought you were dead. I told you to leave.”

There was a moment of near silence, broken only by the beeping sound of the machine connected to my arm that eased slower with seconds passing. Taking a deeper breath and turning my head to chase the familiar voice take a lot more of me that I thought of, but finally I crack my eyes open to find him, my half brother, Connor.

‘I told you I couldn’t.’ My voice sounded so hoarse I barely recognize it at first, ‘It didn’t feel right.’

He is in his usual polished silver and whites, suits that covers almost about everything that he has gone through in the past. His act fails for a moment though, how the smirk that is supposed to join a sarcastic remark actually feels like nostalgia for an aftermath that never happened but would have prefered instead of this one. “Tell me, how does it feel now?”

We would give into the semblance of some laughter though the pain feels like sinking pins and needles all around my torso interrupting soon enough the futile attempt. The burning bleeding sensation that bursted me into coughing started ceasing only with the warmth of his hand on my arm. It is just then when I look around us and notice the room has no windows, there’s absolutely no chattering outside.

‘This is not any hospital. Where am I, Connor?’

That’s the first time he actually smiles, not genuinely but in the way only a broken man would, finding glory in the downfall of someone else, in the tortured fragments, in the roaring flames.

“You’re in Hell with me, Roman. You’ll be dead for everyone else.”

I’ve grown a certain disdain for death. No matter how much I wanted her at times, she couldn’t have me. She loves to watch —standing in the trenches of our madness where she carefully trapped us in barbed wire, as if waiting for us to be torn apart by our pasts after not having buried them properly every time before.

I feel hungry and hollow with only his name lodged in my chest like a gun ready to fire off at whoever is presented in front of me. These screams are different than the ones in the battlefield, these ones are loud in their silence that I fear my brain is going to burst within my skull the longer I hold in this obituary of unnamed corpses and scattered ruins. I am wrapped in cotton —drenched in salt and crimson— wishing to sleep soundly in the lonesome dark instead. I close my eyes to fall in my very own abyss and make the bottom my home now. His are a land I had shipwrecked on and no matter what, I owe him my life.

I’m undone with the realization now that I’m fully awake:

I am a ghost left to haunt the dark side of the moon for him, to hurt and be hurt.

Solo: solar flares and stellar lights.

Born and cradled in the dark, I’m the nostalgic glow of the stars in a permanent state of desire for something I can’t find. Melancholy for a place I haven’t been bares its teeth and sinks deep into my neck. I’m on the edge, rejecting this empty space, screaming out this ache.

I’ve gotten afraid to dream, terrified of the one too many deaths I wake up from to the morning light. Last night’s scene keeps playing in some twisted persistence of my mind until I find the meaning I still can’t figure out.

I am buried deep within the depths of my own mind; a little girl, six feet under in a coffin carved out of her own tainted past. I claw through the dirt, the mud and the blood, gasping for air while surrounded again by the pictures of our wrecked home.

‘You have been asking the wrong person.’ Her voice would echo in every corner of our house; hauntingly, uninvited —like a ghost looming over someone else’s grief to whisper about broken promises, like a personal enemy pulling apart the wounds only to pour more salt on them.

The reverberations are strong enough for the shaky grounds to crack beneath my feet, and it doesn’t matter how quick I think I react, the ceiling has already started giving in as the loud-colored walls tumble down around me. The memories break free from shattered mirrors and I am surrounded by fumes of ghastly vapor peeking through and rising to the scarlet skyline. I piled the bricks too high, I think, but I didn’t build only that. This is my kingdom coming undone. There is some glowing red flame chasing the darkness away in the middle of it all, but I still can hear her words hissing like raindrops and joining the smoke and ruination, resonating to the very marrow of me. I notice then the wild blooms beneath some heaps of stone — petals rebelling under a nation of conspiracing stars that eclipse in front of my eyes for all their crimes.

“I’ve dreamt so many times we’ve made it out of here.”

It took me a while to realize what the bitter taste in my mouth was for; it was my tongue the one I had been biting during my sleep, my blood what I had left as a reminder. I feel it in me though, like an oath kept between my own shadow and my soul —her name and the place we never actually belonged.

In a parallel world, I could save us, my Atlantis. We built it up and never pulled it down.

I am exhausted, navigating in the void night seas and crowded day lands. I pinch the bridge of my nose trying to dismiss the weight against my chest and shoulders —making me want to sink further on the chair— but all I taste is that abysmal loop, and reality’s pathetic grip on me loosens even when my eyes are still open.

‘What’s in your head?’ Connor asks but I know better than to believe he actually cares for the answer. I shake my head, looking away and at nothing in particular —the horizon is fogs of rain outside his pretentious glass walls.

Sometimes I feel like I’m losing myself here. Dogma is the farthest from ‘normal’ a place can be, it actually is the closest to Hell I’ve ever been. Yet it is also where you are offered what you need or what you want, and Connor smiling like the devil himself would deliver it to you, claiming only your weight in blood in return. Despite of my reason why, I can’t get over the fact I willingly knocked on those god forsaken doors and lost so much more in the end instead.

‘Okay, this is your next target.’

He sets the folder in front of me, the neatly presented information of someone that we usually don’t know but supposedly there are reasons enough, and money behind, to have their blood spilled in one deserted corner of this bloody town. I open it, flip on the pages.

Wait. I know this person.

My pulse quickens. I’m a myriad of intentions lost in translation but I know I can’t take anyone else down with me anymore.

“We can’t kill her. She’s helped us with jobs before, Rigel helped you finding —”

‘I know what she’s done, what she is and that is exactly the reason why I want her gone.’

“What do you mean?” I couldn’t care less about his affairs below the moon, I know no one is ever safe anyways, but —

Standing behind his desk, he leans with his hands on the polished wood; his voice giving away the amount of bones he would personally make up a graveyard for . ‘I mean I want her gone, I want every and each one of these freaks of nature gone.’

“You finally lost your fucking mind.” I toss his joke of a mission, not even caring where the hell it would land. “I won’t play your hitman for some personal vendetta you could have.”

‘This is hilarious coming from the person who kills so to find someone. You out of anyone should get it.’ He is scattered grains of time; past, present, future blended into one. The skeletons in both of our closets did really plot hard to mess everything in our lives up.

“Fuck it. I’m not doing this.”

Turning to leave, his fingers wrap around my arm in a bruising grip to pull me back. I manage to rip myself away from his grasp, but he’s back now at my throat, strucking me against the wall behind me harder than a bullet could hit me. My thoughts jumble together, the pain refuses to let me focus on the threat right in front of me. There is a defeaning, erratic thumping inside my chest, as if a raven were trapped there and beating itself to death while trying to set free. “Let go of me.”

‘You don’t, and I use my resources to find your sister only to kill her myself. You are doing this for me, Stella. Everyone is going to.’ Damned if do, damned if I don’t. It doesn’t matter where the line has been drawn.

Everything is brawling inside me: the blood-saturated grounds, my infected heart bleeding in its cage, the ruins. . I am exiled embers and the devil’s favorite game in this sad earthly scene.

I twist, try to push him back and away from me, but he chokes my fire until the veins start to shiver in tendrils of smoke closer to a tamed candle-flame.

I spit at him. I hate him. I hate him.

What’s in your head?

I used to dream once – dream of the light greeting dark, of a place where all wrongs turn to right – where we went to disappear when we were tired. All I know now is this hunger that nothing can satisfy, gnawing me from the inside out while looking for something I can't describe.

Zombie.

I am one with the crowds again, but an intentional bump on the shoulder has me losing balance enough to turn around and see waves of similar seafire with a smile tugging on the corners while walking away from me. She has whispered something near my ear, something that echoes but I can’t quite discern. It is enough to have me following, but I’m soon losing her after she takes the first corner into a mass of people and their january concerns.

Back in my bed, I am walking into the maze of lost greens with the name hanging like the gardens of Babylon on my lips, but I don’t find her this time. It is not Amber on the other end. .

Like black abysses, my eyes entrap the light, capture the beams. There’s a web of constellations behind and I follow the trail of stardust out of my own skin and back.

I’m reminiscing things I didn’t know I knew, reaching out for maps right from the galaxy’s edge —to connect the dots, to lead me home.

The whispers from earlier are so clear now:

Wake up, Stella.

Wake up.

It’s you. You’re the weapon.

You can tell your God he can keep his salvation. And if you like, the angels can fly into the sun.

But first, I drown. .

Solo: Medieval Tales, Honey and Rage.

But when I die, I want it to hurt. (…) when this entire town is wiped off the map, I want it to hurt, bad, because that means it meant something.

I am wearing her favorite dress, the one she personalized for me with sleeves made of lace — to make me look at the mirror and show me what purity is supposed to look like. I had made some changes to it though, before tainting it red, I got rid of the sheer veils and kept solely the fabric that hugged my skin and showed the curves of my body she so hard tried to conceal. I also made a cut down the cleavage that showed the suppleness of breasts that existed despite of her countless unheard prayers not to.

I dressed for the occasion definitely, and with a perfect shaped mouth in violent cherry, I smile in a way I looked overall crafted by the devil himself.

I have already met the forest in rituals, breathed life into the latent seeds until they bled their insides out into sprouting vines that coiled around me and kissed me new under the spell of the moonlight. Its nocturnal essence whispered: die with me, and I have danced over the dew covered grass with my nakedness embracing the hymns of the damned resonating inside the bones at the devil’s hour. I am one with the stars that never burst inside my ribcage, the blood of the witches that they could never burn at the stake.

I hold one of the roses of the fresh bouquet someone has left for her. Some of her ‘charity’ partners, I guess. I don’t even stare at it for a second too long, her velvety glory can be felt in the way I crush it, draining the colors until the crown of petals resembles her kingdom coming undone — scattering on the ground like graveyard dust. This feels a little medieval, don’t you think?

The red is mine, and I can taste the mortality in my mouth as the stem falls naked with only my laughter echoing behind; obscene delights as a crowd impatiently screaming on: off with her head.

‘They don’t have a clue, do they?’

She looks so fragile now with the tube inserted into her windpipe through the mouth that I can almost feel like singing her a funeral song, drown her in the water of roses before leaving her there for dead. The smell of burned flesh through her bandages — sickening, nauseating — is enough reminder though. The smoke in the cracks of her lips that are the only ones uncovered from her whole face start struggling to make a sound, or more likely a scream for help.

I sadly didn’t do this by myself, but how much I wish so. I was the devil on someone else’s shoulder, Cassia's, her flames the ones crackling like whips and burning for me that cage to the ground.

‘Of course I was going to come back for you.’ My fingers are smooth criminals dancing along the oxygen line flow connected to the ventilator machine before curling it enough to only let the bare minimum space for air to come through in and out of her lungs.

‘I would always come back for my mother dearest’. The heart monitor beeping picks up pace along with the state of panic I can see in her eyes.

Locked behind doors, surrounded by crucifixes, woken up with whippings drenched in holy water; I did more than imagine what my ancestors felt on previous days on Salem. I wasn’t held by ropes and melting in flames though, no. Here, the woman who gave birth to me had hope —she only burned parts of me, bled parts of me, parts that no one could see with clothing that covered from wrists to ankles; and left my face untouched though still hated when even wearing no make up, did not hint any resemblance of angelic tale. She was a hungry vulture ready to feast on my every whimper, pulling me apart on her temple’s altar just so to stitch me back to the bone, to the daughter that she was always supposed to receive instead of me.

Tender has been no night, not with her.

And her struggle is sweet like honey in their dying echo, as I turn off the machine and the seconds shrink between beeps. That last cry reserved for the dead in her so proclaimed ascending light drowns in the flatline sound, and with a smile on my face I swept her under the rug and all the time wasted on her.

Fingers tingle with blossoming electricity, everything comes and dissipates into cosmic memoirs; and I sense their plans, their insinuations of death. .

‘I can feel them, Atlas, the oaths, the whispers of the stars.’

He withdraws the letter of his father from my hands, though the orchestrations of the constellations before we were born still burn on the palms of my hands, I can even say they carved their way underneath skin to become one with me and my doings.

“I don’t know why yet, why all of this is supposed to happen.”

‘Maybe we can know more when we link to the hunter’s mind with Rigel again. The last time—’

“The last time was a mistake. You both are not risking yourselves like that.”

But the whirlpools of blue are damned seas of black hiding so much more underneath the surface. And I wish I could refute like every time before I have done, but the way crimson drops fell from his lips last night still haunts me. And I still don’t know how is that he made it inside the alleys of my mind. .

“I drive witch bloodline whores to the Devil himself. Do you want to meet Him before you die, you ugly prick? Feel death a thousand times over before you actually fucking die?”

My head was spinning as the darkness lifted a veil of a memory that isn’t mine right in front of me; everything felt wrong since the chasing of a feeling revolving in reverse. They say the road to Hell is paved in dreams, but so it is of nightmares, the ones with flickering lights and Rorschach butterflies spitting free out of wounds. His eyes felt like the haunted forests witches would go to dance about their sins, but the air around him tasted like wounded flesh and dried blood, cursed stars, regrets and nostalgia.

I recognized the incantation of revelation coming from him — Orion, I would know his name now — before there’s a cloud of black smoke tumbling from the bald man’s mouth he was talking with, the shape of a scorpion formed and hissed for being summoned without consent in the dead of the night. I was still looking at it, jerking out of his host’s misery, before the hunter started pumping gasoline until he was full to the brim and spilling over the deserted gas station. I could hear the cries of his ancestors piercing my every thought, their pain throbbing in my head, feel the weight of their laments crushing my knees to the point of taking my full strength not to bend at it. With my hands covering my ears and squeezing my eyes shut, I could not see further, but the sickening smell of their death still infiltrated my lungs.

My eyes burned with tears that refused to leave but blinked free at last the moment the thump sound of his lifeless corpse hit the ground. His jaw was dislocated, his eyelids opened to the terror that was the last thing he saw, but nothing compared to when the hunter’s were in full eclipse and his mouth opened wide enough to devour his entire head in two bites. Sharpened teeth sank into his neck right to his windpipe and I almost vomited with the sick wet sound of sucking blood until the man’s skin turned ashened grey.

I release the air I didn’t know I was holding and for a moment it was like he could smell me in the corner of my own brain, as if he could feel the erratic thumping inside my chest. Tilting his head back and inhaling every bit of me into his bloodstream like some twisted predator, he turned his face exactly to where I was. His mask was still off and I was one scream waking me up back into the daylight.

You are not killing any more of us, I swore that morning. You’re not killing any more of us.

But first, first I will destroy your hatred. Now. My hate is colder, stronger, and you’ll have no hate to warm yourself. You will have nothing.

“Saiph.”

Eye contact is enough to leave that horror show playback and focus on the current threads of reality instead. ‘Yes?’

“What about this other one, the one Rigel also saw would be crossing our path. Volek?”

I have already whispered someone’s fate into her ear, woken her up from the dormant state she was in.

‘I’m already taking care of that.’