MELITA
Melita had made too many errors in her short life to ever consider herself remarkable – scorched embers, ashen cinders, plucked horizons she’d always yearned to chase down, run into the ground moments thereafter. She hadn’t been capable of saving anyone. She’d only defended and shielded for so long, she’d only pried tenacity and obstinance from the void, and she’d only gallivanted off into mischief, into flames and infernos. The teasing and taunting had hit its mark though, and she laughed, light and airy again, struggling to smother down everything else threatening to bound its way along her throat. “That’s a relief.” She retreated down from the stool for a moment, a war waging behind her eyes, for the triviality of it all, when it really didn’t matter in the end – And that it did, all at the same time.
The youth kept her glance away from him, purposefully, rooting herself into the floor, staring up at the wall, as if surveying what they needed to do next, what looked good, what looked like it required some more work. “I liked her too.” But like most things she cherished and adored, it all spun away into nothingness, decayed, wrecked, and rotted; as if she couldn’t keep hold of anything, as if the flames surged and sought, but had no tethers, no lines, of its own.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Give the bruises out like gifts
