Proud swans.

My nights are filled with fear, and so is my mind; clogged and confused the machinery is broken. Jammed, stuck on repeat. I’m falling, slipping through a waterfall of emotion and it’s shattering my form; fragile and transparent I’m blending inside the watercolour. Give me your paintbrush and I’ll paint the world in my blood, even then it will still only be in a negative array of gray.

 

Forever the pessimist I’ve got some admirers, I’ve moved away from the beast… and yet she seems to have followed me over the seas. I didn’t know she could do that; thought I would be safe from the house of horrors, but it’s roots lie deeper than within soil. My memories are building blocks for her hatred and the spittle lands on me even within the shelter of new land.

 

I’m looking all around for my sanctuary, but that doesn’t seem to have followed me along the way, sometimes I think I can smell one but then the scent goes cold and I am left abandoned. I’m in the house; under the covers can you see me? No one will find me here; I’m such a clever little loser. I think she has forgotten about me, but I can’t be sure so I’ll stay here. I’ll make this my sanctuary.

 

I’ve built a fort around the castle within me using blankets and pillows; I mounted them upon one another and created a masterpiece. Nothing will get through to me now, there is a room in the castle, and in that room is a box and I’m hiding all of my feelings away in there. I gave the key to a thief and she popped it in her mouth. I warned her about the dangers of indigestion but she didn’t seem bothered.

 

There is a song being hummed by a dead crow, it sits upon the shelf and whistles through its decaying beak. I’ve called him Darrel, I think it’s a him though I can’t be sure, I’m not going to venture from my lair to find out: too risky, far too risky. I talk to him sometimes, I told him about my wings, charred and matted as they are. He wants to see them, but I daren’t come out, I daren’t.

He promised to keep a look out for the devil, but he doesn’t know of her sneaky ways: as soon as I leave this white home she’ll pounce upon me as a panther and rip out my heart, leaving me there with a hole in the center of my being. I’ve only just managed to fill it with cement; I can’t let her suck my entity from me this soon.

 

The crow mocks me at times, calling me up on my defeat, he asks me if I think this is living, I tell him of how my breaths coil in front of my face. Proof, I am smug but he merely laughs. Breathing isn’t living hiding isn’t living. Your castle is dead; there hasn’t been a heartbeat since you arrived here. I scream, loudly so loudly: I want to deafen him, I want to scream until he is blown away and can’t patronize me any longer.

 

I scream so loud I can no longer hear what it is he is trying to tell me, there aren’t words, only a note: long and piercing, cutting the silence of the night, or is it day? I’m not too sure; I think I have been here for a few hours, a few years. I’ve lost count, my memory is baby food, and I’m going to scatter the substance along the floor for the vultures to feed upon.  I heard they like the weak little morsels best, and so that is what I shall provide, definitely no difficulty there.

 

I fall asleep, it happens sometimes, though not often. Sometimes there is nothing and I wonder when I awake if that is what death is like. If so perhaps I shall welcome it as an old friend, there is no fear in this cobweb of deception and there won’t be for a long time.

 

But most of the time there are the nightmares, memories and flashbacks that hit with the pain of lightening, I am the tree that channels the sheer force and energy. My body is a chalice and I am the light through which the darkness is allowed to pass. I am tainted by the evil that crawls within my pores; it creates a crack that you can follow with your finger. It is raised at the sides and purple created by the knife that I grasp.

 

I wish I could turn the blade upon the one who visits my unconscious mind, but I can’t: these aren’t dreams I can control, I do not wake when she kills me because she follows me through to hell. I am me, and I am lying upon the porcelain floor, it is porcelain and it is cold. It has been an acquaintance for a long time, I can feel its tears on my cheeks, and I reach out to pat the poor floor, such disgrace it must witness.

 

She beckons to me, a grin splitting her face; she looks like a clown ridiculous and menacing. But I’ve never been afraid of clowns; I’m afraid of her. I’m afraid of talking about her, because of the shame. I am a tiny mouse, lost in the harvest of my own demise, the language that I speak is that of those who are lost and consequently they are the only ones who can understand what it is I try to express.

There are the swans of pride; they have not felt the cold sting of a whip’s embrace as it licks its way along the flesh of youth. But I have, I am no ugly duckling for there is no potential to bloom, to blossom into something greater than circumstance.

This is something that I have come to accept, I am not wise but I am experienced and perhaps in a way I can thank her for that if nothing else. Because when you are stripped of everything you need to look for something, something to prove it hasn’t all been a waste. Something that means my former self wasn’t lost for a worthless cause.

 

But trying to justify this, it’s painful, I’m trying to tell them that I didn’t want it, but what is it that I didn’t want. I can’t say that out loud though I want to, but if the wind takes it then the leaves will carry it within their filmy forms and whisper it to the lonely people.

 

They are evil those lonely people, they talk nonsense didn’t you know? The crow taught me that, he overhears them sometimes, talking of what the leaves tell them and it’s those stories that are meant to be kept behind closed lips. What if she walks past the bridge and finds out that I’ve been getting bolder? Shame will become me I am sure of it!

 

So I will leave it be for now, I’ll stay the silent smile and lock my hurt in the ink, and hope that it stays there instead of following me out. But I won’t be holding my breath; there simply isn’t enough of it. 

Reviews

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I feel like I can relate to a lot of this on a level most people will never understand. You've seen darkness, been stripped back like I have...there are lines here that ring out and you've touched on subjects that happen up there in the edges of our minds, that don't need to be seen often