MELITA
She’d errored somehow, someway, sensed it in the darker shrouds, in the laden way the shadows cast over him, despite the sun, despite the presence of spring, despite the curling essence of new, reborn things – too quiet, too furrowed, too chiseled into something like melancholy. Her jaw clenched, breathing, striving to subdue all the excitement, all the ebullience, all the sunshine she’d enamored and beheld only moments ago; those halcyon vibes no longer flourishing, diminished and forlorn over the pieces, the shrapnel, the enamel of the unknown. Her eyes shot immediately to Lusea’s lantern, and the initial confusion bewildered, didn’t allow her to think before speaking – the impetuous, impulsive lines driven along her mouth. “Why do we need to put Lusea’s lantern up?” Her brows quirked together amidst uncertainty, pulsing and pervading, until understanding seemed to dawn, slowly, tragically, puzzle pieces unfurling from their nooses.Lusea was gone. Again. Souls granted, revived, and then released, as if it had never mattered. Something bitter choked down her throat, for Sunjata, for Lusea, for all the other lost moments and individuals who’d been granted second chances and then split apart the moment they set their feet on earth. “I’m sorry.” Her voice quieted, and her eyes went to the wall, rather than at him, because she knew what it meant to grieve, what it meant to lose, over and over and over again – her mother’s choking hands clasping her gnarled, bony hands around her throat, every gentle honor lost in the figment of ghosts and mirages. “What happened?”
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Give the bruises out like gifts
