MELITA
Her hands were occupied with the chalk and rulers, otherwise she might’ve balled them into fists, curled nails back into her palms; all she did now was breathe slowly, striving to control the fire raging under her skin. When he finally asked, quietly, on some hushed mannerism she hadn’t thought he’d possess, she whipped her head back around, so there were dashes of crimson, symbolic little gestures and coils of a world she’d long since lost, but hadn’t left behind. “Don’t you?” She couldn’t imagine keeping it together, under wraps, tightly closed and clustered away from everyone, from everything – but she was prone to blistering, to scathing, to rippling undulations of treacherous, rapacious fringes, trying desperately to claw her way into things that weren’t so cold, that weren’t so dark. The girl talked about her family whenever she could, preserved them at their best, at their brightest, and not the cold knuckles pressed into her throat, or her sister’s choking, final, collapsed breaths. Why he’d want to bury Lusea under wraps, under ruins, was beyond her. “I barely knew her.” But she’d wanted to – fire and spirit and conflagrations, drifting on their embers and cinders, rippling across grasslands and scorching into the earth was just one giant inferno in their wake. Her voice might’ve bordered on the incredulous, on the stoking, kindling sources; but only because she didn’t know what else to do. Then she turned back to stare at the wall, the ruler and chalk in her grasp, an irreverent, choking hold on their wares, wishing they would become ashes or dust in her clenching feats, so that something bothered to be destroyed in her wake. Instead of elsewhere. Instead of people, instead of places, instead of potential. “And now she’s gone. Just like that.” Like it was nothing. Like particles and ether. Like vestiges and ash. Like dust and pebbles. As if naught mattered. Her jaw unclenched, and the youth didn’t bother swallowing down the vitriol she had – it wasn’t for Sunjata, but for the way everything always seemed to work. “Aren’t you tired of it?” Tired of the loss? Tired of striving for things that could never be? Tired of heartache and defeat?
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Give the bruises out like gifts
