Isn't it wonderful when a story springs and spins and is spun until it spans out all around you? Midnight searching for a life to be lived in the even breaths between words and lulled into a sunshine haze. Strolling by the narrator's side, I did not see the violent bend ahead through the rough part of town, where the ivy steals your shadow, whispering as if plotting to pour the pavement a glassful of your sanguine blood, create cakes of grime and empty souls screaming, your bones ground into powdered sugar to finish it all off. I could not tell whether we would make it out this time, but the thrall of the letters had already held me captive in the chromebook's white light, your hand gripping mine as our white knuckles grasped one another in a clammy embrace. No, I would not leave you here.
But when I met your mother and we watched her body decay, I could not stop you as you walked alone in the empty house. The curtains' velvet tongues grew to only know the taste of dust, the vines crawling up your youth and turning everyone into mere ghosts. When the little boy came I was wary, but you were far past listening to me and you clutched the mud on his brow as you were finally ripped from my grasp. To you, I was only a ghost. But darling, why did you never look down and realize we were birds of a feather? Then he laughed as he let go of you, and we were both alone somewhere, but ever so alone, alone, alone.
As the black pinched the skin of my ribs I clutched the blanket closer, the flowers turning to ivy before my eyes. They crept around my body as my slick skin sweat as the footsteps grew closer. But nobody was awake, because I was not in a street at all, I was in my bed that felt too tight for my liking as my own mind anchored me there. Some part of me knew that you were only a story, a character created by someone like me. But your words rang in my ears and clung to my eyes and I was deaf to my own self because some days, the night will do that to you. You came to haunt me as a figment of my imagination, and I slipped out of the coffin and creaked to my mother's bedroom, right through you, right through you. I peered at her face bathed in light and said everything was alright, because even at 16 years old her face still comforts the child deep down. Her concern enveloped me in a child's halo of stars, and although I still heard your innocent whispers and the what ifs of your demise, the only thing I knew was the fear that finally bled out of my tired, tired eyes. Chanting her face like a prayer, the ivy turned back into flowers and sweat cooled on my brow. You were still there, lingering on my lashes, but the shadows turned into nothingness as my blinks grew far and few between, the night dissipating into day again.
You're still here, I feel you still. Even as I type this I know reading your story will be on my long list of regrets that I hope to forget. But in the daylight, I find out from my sister that she was your footsteps, and from my blanket that the flowers are still flowers. And maybe, as your power over me fades, you will find a better past time than haunting my every step. Or maybe I will be able to disillusion myself into believing you are simply another story I read at midnight, another unfortunate soul lost to the clutches of a writer's dark glee. But until then, it is you and me, here, every night, cocooned here by a red floral blanket submerged in pitch, watching as another story springs and spins and is spun until it spans out all around us. Who knows, maybe we'll make a friend tonight.
But when I met your mother and we watched her body decay, I could not stop you as you walked alone in the empty house. The curtains' velvet tongues grew to only know the taste of dust, the vines crawling up your youth and turning everyone into mere ghosts. When the little boy came I was wary, but you were far past listening to me and you clutched the mud on his brow as you were finally ripped from my grasp. To you, I was only a ghost. But darling, why did you never look down and realize we were birds of a feather? Then he laughed as he let go of you, and we were both alone somewhere, but ever so alone, alone, alone.
As the black pinched the skin of my ribs I clutched the blanket closer, the flowers turning to ivy before my eyes. They crept around my body as my slick skin sweat as the footsteps grew closer. But nobody was awake, because I was not in a street at all, I was in my bed that felt too tight for my liking as my own mind anchored me there. Some part of me knew that you were only a story, a character created by someone like me. But your words rang in my ears and clung to my eyes and I was deaf to my own self because some days, the night will do that to you. You came to haunt me as a figment of my imagination, and I slipped out of the coffin and creaked to my mother's bedroom, right through you, right through you. I peered at her face bathed in light and said everything was alright, because even at 16 years old her face still comforts the child deep down. Her concern enveloped me in a child's halo of stars, and although I still heard your innocent whispers and the what ifs of your demise, the only thing I knew was the fear that finally bled out of my tired, tired eyes. Chanting her face like a prayer, the ivy turned back into flowers and sweat cooled on my brow. You were still there, lingering on my lashes, but the shadows turned into nothingness as my blinks grew far and few between, the night dissipating into day again.
You're still here, I feel you still. Even as I type this I know reading your story will be on my long list of regrets that I hope to forget. But in the daylight, I find out from my sister that she was your footsteps, and from my blanket that the flowers are still flowers. And maybe, as your power over me fades, you will find a better past time than haunting my every step. Or maybe I will be able to disillusion myself into believing you are simply another story I read at midnight, another unfortunate soul lost to the clutches of a writer's dark glee. But until then, it is you and me, here, every night, cocooned here by a red floral blanket submerged in pitch, watching as another story springs and spins and is spun until it spans out all around us. Who knows, maybe we'll make a friend tonight.
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