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[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

XVIII

"I don't think I've ever met a person with such a weak will to live, and yet such a vicious instinct to survive."

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

XVII

That smile of yours is such a gentle thing, I can almost forget you will be the ruin of us all.

Ah, but then again—was it not us, fools and warriors, children with bloody robes and lives turning bloodier still, with mud under our nails and death sticking to our flesh, that saw a boy with wide eyes and a soft gaze and said, ah, this one, this one is no good.

Was it not us who saw delicate hands and tender grins, and thought nothing of the glint of what might be teeth, might be claws, ready to kill?

Alas, such is the tragedy of youth turned soldiers, of bodies still soft around the edges with childhood, hearts still warm with summer hues. We forgot, for a moment, that our torn seams and our cracked ribs, our bleeding knuckles and violent grins, were not the only kind of death in here.

All is fair in love and war, they say, and my dear, I used to think your bones would shatter under the fury of war and your skin would tear in the face of the wrath of love. But now golden eyes, cat eyes, sharp eyes stare back at me, and the only red I can see is the one of all the strings wrapped around your thin hands, artist’s hands, like rings, like promises. Like debts. Like lives.

It was never me directing this play, never me leading an orchestra of doom, of the most glorious typhoon. It was you, with your soft hands and your gentle eyes, with your paint brushes hiding a knife behind the hero’s back, with your pens writing a poem where their friend was no friend at all, and thus the villain dies. It is most amusing, really, how all you were good for were words and songs and bumbling slips of the tongue, when all this vitriol simmers in your mouth, dripping from teeth sharp enough to tear my throat apart.

I know of teeth, and poison, and of words. I know of these things you do, and this art of yours, so subtle and yet so crude. I know it well, too, because nobody carries it like you.

We are sitting at a ball, and you are smiling, and I am laughing, a pleasant laugh, with gentle eyes and a blithe twist to my mouth. These teeth know the taste of blood, and this mouth knows the kiss of death, and this body of mine knows the fire of war and the ice of defeat, and it knows the gore of the glory we all celebrate tonight.

There is music, and it is mine, and it is yours. They are dancing, always dancing, always fighting, and tonight there is rest, there is peace, and there is discord running through the marble under our feet, and beasts waiting to be fed in every cage of flesh we have so delicately made. This is peace, they say, but this is war. War never ends. Not for us. Not like this.

This is no respite, because there is no life and no peace in the cheer of the festivities and the warmth of all their cheeks, in the beauty of their robes and the glimmer of their silver, their gold, the swords we all pretend to ignore, as though they were part of our skeleton since long, long before we fed them blood. You have no sword, because you’ve taken no lives with those pretty hands of yours, all too busy letting the world do it for you. I have two, and I use them better than most, and I am loved more than you, because they think me an airhead with a lovesick heart, and they think you a coward with a craven gut.

Oh, love. If only they knew they move in a dance of death, coaxed by strings dripping red where they dig into your flesh and bleed your enemy’s stardust into your joints, perhaps they would understand monsters are not buried in a trench outside these golden halls, but sitting on a table, smiling over a cup of wine.

It is you. It has always been you. And I am a fool.

(And yet I hold your hand and let you lead me, watching, watching, always watching—you know you are caught, and I know I am trapped, and we smile and laugh and sing, for nobody knows of smiles and gentle eyes like we do.

The world will never know.

The world would not stand a chance if it did.)

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

XVI

I'm 13, and I meet you. I'm 14, and I love you. I'm 14 and 10 months, and I lose you. 

13 months to leave a mark of any kind, to choose what I should remember you by, and you choose a gaping wound. Am I supposed to love you by a scar?

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

XV

I have long since set out on a constant, near-frenzied quest to find pieces of her in poems, in books, in stories. In memories that seem saccharine now, when tinged so delightfully with the finality of farewells. In promises that were never intended to be kept. In the eternal pursuit of answers where there are none.

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

XIV

He's sixteen, and he's in love.

He's sixteen, and he's in love, and he's happy, and he doesn't know it yet, but he won't be for long.

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

XIII

"I'm not old enough to see the appeal in drinking alone yet," she said flatly, delighted in the peels of laughter she incited. "Give it some five years, when I'm in college and inevitably find something to be blue about."

Laughter, hearty and true and maybe a little tired in its fondness, followed her through the door. She peeked back out, compelled by the same curiosity, the same blank space waiting to be filled, the same uncertainty. Her smile was a cavalier, wide thing.

"Are you laughing at my shamelessness?" She asked, airy, as though she didn't know the answer and as though she was born knowing.

A nod, a grin, a pair of black, loving eyes.

Another line written down next to the word reactions.

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

XII

"I missed you," she said, quiet and honest, and there was the sound of a fissure appearing in an ashen rib bone.

I smiled. "Me, too."

Did I?

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

XI

I've simultaneously hated and loved my brain for so long that I don't know which feeling is predominant nowadays. It's a detached, simple sort of sensation, a faint kind of realization—I can't tolerate the corners of my mind and then I wish I could stay trapped within its confines eternally, as if by turns.

It's maddening. It's pathetic.

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

X

Sometimes, you see, I need to be needed. It is such a lovely feeling, to know there is a reason for you to breathe, a reason for you to keep walking. Other times, it suffocates me. It is like swimming to the bottom of the pool, crouching in the deep end, ears aching with the pressure and lungs burning with the strain, knowing that you could drown at any moment and it'd be your doing and the universe's choice.

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

IX 

"In order to survive, we kill parts of ourselves over and over again. We attend wakes, light candles, pour dirt over empty caskets loaded with ash and leave flowers on blank headstones. We make graves out of our lives, our memories. We're six feet under long before we've ever really lived yet; long before we've dared to dream of the extraordinary beyond the comfort of the ordinary."

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

VIII

"The taste of blood is one I'm well acquainted with. It is on my tongue, on my fingertips, in the empty cavity in my chest where my heart used to be. It lingers on my molars and my nails, on my toes and my soles, and it lingers most of all on my lips, persistently reminding me of the life I was given, and the lives I have stolen."

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

VII

"What right do I have to tell the world how to feel?"

"A titanic one, considering you're a man that lost everything because of them."

"I lost everything because of me."

"You really believe that? Don't be self important. You lost everything because they wanted you to. You weren't a reason, you were just an excuse. It's impressive that they managed to convince the whole world, convince you, otherwise. Impressive, but not surprising."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The entirety of our world is always twitching, oh so eager to jump on you like a hungry dog and open your throat with their teeth. You refuse to abide by their rules, play their games, use their standards. You live to reject them, and mock them. You're the very thing they hate most. Rebellion made of thin, cracked bones.”

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

VI

"Those emotions that you so zealously keep inside will be the death of you one day," he muttered, jabbing a harsh finger at her chest, right over her heart. Right over soft scar tissue and muscle.

She didn't skip a beat, grin bright as ever as she lifted her bottle up high. "Let 'em! I'll go gladly."

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

V

"No lies. No theatrics. These are but facts, hard and true, and you must beat them into that head of yours like you would a drum."

"I haven't played a drum once in my life."

"I figured your answer might be something of the sort. But one needn't play a drum to know how to do so. Listen to reason, my dear."

"Reason? You're the one that lacks sense! Have you gone mad after all this time?"

"Oh, darling," she said, gentle and sweeter than grapes, smile such a lovely little thing. "These aren't a mad woman's ramblings. These are a mad woman's memoirs."

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

IV

"From the moment I met you, all I've wanted to do is protect you," she said simply, eyes beseeching, but something gave her pause, a chuckle more sad than amused lifting the corners of her mouth. "I've done a remarkably shitty job of it, I know, but it's the truth."

His jaw clenched at her dry confession, horror and despair welling up in his breast, but her throat bobbed before he could muster up the courage to speak. Her face, always so ghastly, seemed all the more pale under the moon's splendor, bathed in regret and a hint of tender doubt, of gentle sincerity. It was an age-old exhaustion, a scar sizable as continents and old as empires, but her youthful face made the pain all the harsher, all the colder. 

"At least what I have left of it."

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

III

"He did not come from your womb!"

"But he was mine!" She screamed, desperate and with scathing ferocity. "He was mine, far more my own than he would've been had I birthed him!"

[and-when-you-drown]

Snippets

II

"You were willing to do anything, to kill anyone, destroy everything!"

A beat of silence, punctuated by harsh breathing and a delicate, almost confused inhale.

"Were?"

The word was soft, ringing clear through the air, dripping with mystification. It was nigh on wondrous, and when a head full of pale locks rose, all those witnessing the scene felt a pang of fear at the clear, sharp look in those vermillion eyes. No fear, no doubt, no shame; a type of madness found within reason itself.

She laughed softly, a chuckle gentle as it was surprised, as it was sweetly mocking.

"My, you say the funniest of things, dear. Why would you say that, 'were', as though anything at all has changed?”