cowboywrites

[cowboywrites]

Gateway to the World

Run to me, in the stillness of the night.

Neither of us are sleeping, it knows.

Your touch melts my skin, molding into me,

Arms to back, legs tangled, heart in my ears.

I beg you to take it, over and over again.

God knows the coward possesses me.

Run to me, though we're inches away.

Push the knife deeper or let me bleed,

Don't leave me guessing with this torture.

Do you see this, Moon?

Have sympathy for my torment.

The sun can punish my sin when it rises,

But can't you nudge her hand, just this once?

Once and never again, I swear,

No one will ever know but you and me.

Run to me, when I turn to you,

I'll find your outline in the dark, I never lost it.

I've made a deal for everything I have.

The stars will let it go, they have pity for me.

Won't you run to me, darling?

If you won't remember it in the morning?

[cowboywrites]

This can't be womanhood. This can't be what being grown feels like, to be on her own. This feeling has been following her for months but some childish part of her thought she'd be able to handle it now.

[cowboywrites]

The Stars in Two Lover's Eyes

Neither of them know any constellations.

Maybe it would’ve made this moment more romantic. Maybe one of them could have started spewing random knowledge of the stars, and the other would’ve let the words wash over them, knowing they will only remember the voice that said it, not what they mean. Maybe the night sky would show them the figures that are supposedly up there all the time.

But neither of them know what they’re looking at. They just know that it should make them feel small.

Each little white dot in contrast to the pitch black is so far away that it’s almost dizzying to think about. And they’re just here – hours of a car ride from home, their friends sleeping in tents on the other side of the clearing, the dying campfire still crackling in the distance.

And so they look up, both smiling in the dark because their pinkies lock. Warmth spreads through their palms and straight to their chests until the late summer night isn’t so chilly anymore.

They don’t feel that small together. They are the last two people on earth, and they look up into the abyss and it doesn’t scare them as long as their fingers interlace. There could be nothing at all everywhere around, and their breath wouldn’t even hitch.

The weekend was a blur of sand trapped in shoes, store bought meals heated with the campfire, and laughter that stretched the skin around their mouths, their eyes. This last night, before they return home, they wanted to see the stars. Really see the stars. You can never see this many in the city.

Usually the scene goes; they point out the stars they know, they connect each and tell the story.

But they don’t know the constellations.

So instead, one of them sees the stars connect themselves. The scene hypnotizes her eyes, the lines reaching in no orderly fashion. Not to make Orion’s belt, or one of the zodiacs, but just to try and reach every other. A spider web appears before her, and with her hand clasped in the girl’s beside her, she really does feel caught. She finds that she’d gladly walk into any trap if wild curly hair was enticing her on the other side.

The other sees even the dimmest star stand out. A scatter of specks reminds her of the freckles on the girl she can’t help but gravitate to. Each time she looks at her, it’s like there is a new one that she hasn’t memorized yet, and she will memorize them all. The amount of times her heart will try to leap out of her ribs with a reciprocated gaze is the same infinite number of stars in space.

Decades later, when they look back on the night of their first kiss, they won’t remember who said what. They won’t remember any words shared between them but only that soft lips formed something. And they won’t remember who leaned over first, because neither of them know now.

In the present, an overlay of curls block out the stars. If there was any light – if any colour existed between them – brown eyes would meet a twinned set. Two hearts beat faster and faster because their system of bodies were no longer both on the picnic blanket.

Freckled body between the earth and space. Between grass and trees. Between the vastness of the universe and the body on top of her.

There are fingers tangled in dense coils, never wanting to escape. There are hands traveling under clothes, trying to learn each curve.

And the constellations watch, forgotten, and barely even known in the first place.

[cowboywrites]

Why did she come here? She hadn’t stopped to even think about where she was going. Her legs just carried her here on muscle memory. She should have known that she was following the trail of ghosts. But really, what was she hoping for? Her mother and father to change their minds all the sudden? To welcome her back with open arms? For them to be gentle when they left the darkest bruises on her?

She doesn’t know. Truly.

[cowboywrites]

On one hand, she had just barely met J’onn and wanted to stay on his good side. There are very little factors keeping him in her life at the moment.

On the other, she wants to wipe that grin from Alex’s face and kick her ass. For no other reason than Alex just existing this way, the way takes up so much of her thoughts. Thoughts of how infuriating she is, for disliking her for no reason. Thoughts of how stuck up she is. Of how they would work so well together as friends rather than two people who wish the other would disappear.

[cowboywrites]

They don’t let her keep swimming. It’s two against one, and they are still struggling to keep her at bay. She thrashes in their arms, involuntarily crying out as the sobs bubble out of her.

It should give her satisfaction that they can barely hold her back. That is what a fight should give her. That is what it felt like to be powerful. She’s relished in the buzz of it all for years.

And today is the first day Jenny doesn’t feel it. She just feels its absence, the hollowness in her chest and how it grows. It will never stop growing until it’s swallowed her whole

[cowboywrites]

If life was all the same, there would be no adventure, and without adventure there is no world to grow. One cannot exist without the other. Adventure and life are mutually inclusive, and to truly live, one must find a balance between the two.

[cowboywrites]

In the end, it might’ve been her curiosity that gave in. The desire to find out more about this odd, mystifying person and her so-called “crew”. It might’ve been the fact that she could not even walk on her own with this broken leg and needed help. Or it could be that her whole world was turned upside down, destroyed, simply erased from the face of the earth, and she had nowhere else to go.

It was most likely all three.

[cowboywrites]

The Stars in Two Lover's Eyes

Neither of them know any constellations.

Maybe it would’ve made this moment more romantic. Maybe one of them could have started spewing random knowledge of the stars, and the other would’ve let the words wash over them, knowing they will only remember the voice that said it, not what they mean. Maybe the night sky would show them the figures that are supposedly up there all the time.

But neither of them know what they’re looking at. They just know that it should make them feel small.

Each little white dot in contrast to the pitch black is so far away that it’s almost dizzying to think about. And they’re just here – hours of a car ride from home, their friends sleeping in tents on the other side of the clearing, the dying campfire still crackling in the distance.

And so they look up, both smiling in the dark because their pinkies lock. Warmth spreads through their palms and straight to their chests until the late summer night isn’t so chilly anymore.

They don’t feel that small together. They are the last two people on earth, and they look up into the abyss and it doesn’t scare them as long as their fingers interlace. There could be nothing at all everywhere around, and their breath wouldn’t even hitch.

The weekend was a blur of sand trapped in shoes, store bought meals heated with the campfire, and laughter that stretched the skin around their mouths, their eyes. This last night, before they return home, they wanted to see the stars. Really see the stars. You can never see this many in the city.

Usually the scene goes; they point out the stars they know, they connect each and tell the story.

But they don’t know the constellations.

So instead, one of them sees the stars connect themselves. The scene hypnotizes her eyes, the lines reaching in no orderly fashion. Not to make Orion’s belt, or one of the zodiacs, but just to try and reach every other. A spider web appears before her, and with her hand clasped in the girl’s beside her, she really does feel caught. She finds that she’d gladly walk into any trap if wild curly hair was enticing her on the other side.

The other sees even the dimmest star stand out. A scatter of specks reminds her of the freckles on the girl she can’t help but gravitate to. Each time she looks at her, it’s like there is a new one that she hasn’t memorized yet, and she will memorize them all. The amount of times her heart will try to leap out of her ribs with a reciprocated gaze is the same infinite number of stars in space.

Decades later, when they look back on the night of their first kiss, they won’t remember who said what. They won’t remember any words shared between them but only that soft lips formed something. And they won’t remember who leaned over first, because neither of them know now.

In the present, an overlay of curls block out the stars. If there was any light – if any colour existed between them – brown eyes would meet a twinned set. Two hearts beat faster and faster because their system of bodies were no longer both on the picnic blanket.

Freckled body between the earth and space. Between grass and trees. Between the vastness of the universe and the body on top of her.

There are fingers tangled in dense coils, never wanting to escape. There are hands traveling under clothes, trying to learn each curve.

And the constellations watch, forgotten, and barely even known in the first place.

[cowboywrites]

She tries to fall asleep and all she sees is his face. The moment before she knows it’s gone forever. His usual compassionate eyes going wide in fear, mouth open with ragged breathing. Jenny rewinds just a minute before and remembers laughing with him in the middle of all the chaos and it makes her chest contract knowing it was the last time the world was privy to hearing that sound.

[cowboywrites]

This woman hasn't been a mother to her in so long, and it pained her to still listen to her when she said her name like that. Like she was getting a stern talking to after staying up too late on a school night, something that could've happened were it not for her absence. Instead, Toni was hours of a plane ride away, hearing her voice for the first time in years and was terrified of not hearing it again.

[cowboywrites]

I love you, she would say and tuck her into bed. Then she would leave for the night and come back in the early hours of the morning, still swaying on her feet.

I love you, she would say when dropping her off at kindergarten. Then got so high that she forgot to pick her up after.

I love you, after the first, second, third time she came back from rehab. Then didn't even bother checking in after the fourth.

[cowboywrites]

Before Maggie falls asleep, she hopes that she doesn't dream at all. But just like yesterday, and every night before that, she closes her eyes and sees blatant enmity on her father's face and the disappointment on her mother's. She succumbs to the dream that's really a nightmare and hears the door rattle the walls as it shuts in her face all over again.

[cowboywrites]

Last time she was doing something she apparently shouldn't have, she lost everything she had ever had. No matter if she just said the words, if she pleaded with her parents, it made no difference to them. And J'onn has been so kind, but so were they. And J'onn seemed to not mind having her around, but they didn't either until they did. And it's terrifying to possibly relive the same nightmare again.

But the story differs.

[cowboywrites]

Alex tries to follow, but Maggie got used to these streets a lot faster and better than Alex could ever accomplish to. It was inevitable that she lost her to the night.

[cowboywrites]

The girl's open eyes seem to stare right at Jenny. She can't be any older than ten. With black orbs for irises and raven hair that surrounds her round, pale face. Jenny is captivated by the little girl's features, and they start to blend and shift the slightest amount until she sees-

She sees Eris. Jenny sees her little sister, with hollow eyes and dried blood sticking to the side of her ashen face. She sees Eris, and then she's stumbling her way back, emptying her stomach out as soon as she sees daylight again. She sees Eris, the girl she's supposed to protect because yes, Eris might only have Jenny left in this Godsforsaken world but it works both ways; Eris is all Jenny has left, too.

[cowboywrites]

Zamaya leads her through the living room, and abruptly stops just inside the hallway. She's laughing for no reason at all, the world through her eyes is hazy, the music muted even if they're not that far from it. The girl in front of her traps her between herself and the wall just by looking at her. Logically, she could step away at any moment, but why would she want to if it feels this good?

With no restraints, no self-control, Jenny leans forward and kisses her. Zamaya wastes no time in kissing her back.

In their drunken state, it's sloppy at best. But neither seem to care as long as they just stay this close, as long Zamaya keeps her hands in her hair and Jenny keeps grasping at her waist. As long as they find their way to Zamaya's room and crash onto the bed.