Untitled (ONE).

This is going to be part of a series of little chapters in my attempt to finish a short story. Don't expect anything great out of this. It's a work in progress (obviously). For all intents and purposes, it would be great if you read this with the notion that it was written by a twelve-year-old, just so it'll stand a chance. 

I'm also trying to play with the whole point-of-view thing. I usually write stories in third person, but our lesson in Lit is on P.O.V. and I kind of want to get into it. :-??

But in time, we all forgot and we all grew.

The mental image of him in the distance, papers in hand, and a backpack slung over one shoulder. The fraction of a smile aimed in my direction and the feeling that I hadn't been reduced to shivers. Him sitting, then standing, then walking away with just a two-fingered salute to service a goodbye. That film on replay as I stood by the crack of the door, peering in as they kept each other warm by a fire only they could feel.

The mental image of her, trudging through the hallways, dragging her feet, soaked from the downpour and smiling all the while at all the no one's paying attention. The offer of a friendship shot in my direction and a nagging feeling that she would leave me bare. Her mumbling, then laughing, then talking our time away in a waste of well-allotted time. That film on replay as I missed her breathing, dreaming in a room as vacant and as solitary as I always wished I'd never be.

Us on an index card? We're a bit unstructured and vague, and lined and charted and drawn, but not really. We're distant, but only to an extent; and vulnerable, but only enough to be friends. We're there, but only by a finger.

Us on an index card? We're folded and our creases are rather worn, and the edges are a bit frayed. We've been in each other's pockets too many times. We're the back-up back-pocket dynamic that gets pulled out when there's not enough entertainment to pass the time, and no other shoulders to soak up the restless.

Title: Folkin' Around - P!ATD

maybe married to the idea of not.

There's something about something slight, isn't there? Something about someone quite and quiet, and gentle, and despite. And he was. He never said anything, so much so that it compelled you to be good -- how could you be anything else to someone so permitting. 

It's the little things, really. It's what he wears on his wrists and how he tilts his head, and the way he semi-smiles and awkwardly laughs with you -- all the uncertain agreement that comes with the company. It's in the way he wears his shirts and the unknowing; there's an unintentional charm shadowed in that. All the cringes and crumples his mouth made. 

You kind of just want to build him a cave, a safe little corner in the midst of the noise of everything else. Push the world away; come sleep in my arms, I will gladly have you. Play host to a guest that will ask for nothing more than bits and pieces of you. And out of sheer consideration, you will give all you have. 

+++

These people are real, right? It's not just me conjuring up some imaginary population of people? Come closer, let me see. That's okay, we'll fix you up in a bit. Come sit your tired soul and sleep awhile. 

Both in silence, wide-eyed.

It felt like a vast ever-stretching expanse; and even though they knew the water eventually ended a few kilometres down, they made sure they never saw it. Cloaked in the shadow of the day, the setting sun and impending rain, he pulled his coat tighter around him as he sat next-to-and-across from her.

His lips curved up slightly, not quite a smile yet distinguishable as something. He tilted his head to the side and took a long look at her, her features, and then her. He stole glances at the water in between his staring. He was afraid the sun would go down too soon, that rain would come down too early. Maybe, what with his luck, the path underneath them would disappear and they'd find themselves falling into the frigid post-waste, pre-nature mix.

She had her legs folded underneath her, her skin hidden under all her clothes, save for a chance at her neck and clavicles every time the wind blew her hair back. Sometimes, she'd pull the scarf tighter, but she got tired and just rested her head on the arm placed against the backrest-railing. "Tommy," she looked at him. He had wide, smiley eyes, framed by thick lashes. Adolescence had carved his face out well, and he wore it like a fawn -- always a deer caught in the headlights, a deer caught in the sunlight.

He stretched his expression out into a smile, "Kathy." Lit. It looked like he was a lamp and he had been lit.

The last few drops of sunlight danced along her stocking-clad legs, then to her fingers, then on her hair. The wind slurred past them before she spoke, "Ruth's probably waiting for us in the car." She pushed a smile forward, as if begrudgingly.

He looked down first, the click of the key in the ignition and the roar of the engine coming to life, distant. Then he looked at her, and in that moment froze her. He froze her against the background of a setting sun, an oncoming thunderstorm, lying back against the bridge that kept them from sinking. He took her, her hair blowing in the wind, her fingers delicate on her lap and on her face; her eyes fixed on the horizon, and her mind on him.

She stood up and started walking, her ballet flats barely making a sound against the stone pavement. He lagged a little behind. Often he wished he had the guts to steal her. Often she wished they both did. Their lives had spun into a weave too intricate to unravel, and too tiring to put aside. 

*unfinished* 

Disclaimer: This is based on that one scene in Never Let Me Go. I just rewatched it for the nth time and I can't get it out of my head. Js.

and then we stopped fighting.

In the middle of the day, you will wake up to the sound of an empty house and an empty heart and all the thoughts that once haunted you won't be there. They will haunt someone else. You'll look around and wonder what happened to all the living and passion you had caged somewhere deep inside you. Your soul on fire. Your soul in flames. What happened to all the want, desire for more? You will realize, not at first, that you have been consumed.

You'll lie back down on your comfortable bed, stare up at the water-stained ceiling, and be okay. You'll pull your worn blankets up to your chest, curl up underneath it, and look for their hand under the covers. You'll hold it, and feel nothing. Safe, and sleepy. 

"I'm so in love with you's" turn into "I love you's" and eventually dissipate into nothing, a quiet understanding that the space between each other's lips are still saying it, a thin hope that things are as they once were; that the things left unsaid still linger in places no longer touched. Silence will speak for you.

This is what you've become: a faint hope for before, a need for routine, normalcy. Life is no longer ruthless, or raw. You've become ordinary.

we all fall down.

So will you scatter yourself all over the world, in all the places you've ever wanted to be? In all the places you loved? In the air you breathed and the lives you've lived. Will you let the world reuse you as a spec in the never ending, ever-stretching grind of life. As dust, in view of something else.

With all the others who have agreed to be the same -- to all the romantics who thought that they could still be a part of something meaningful even when they couldn't. One of the dreamers living in a dream, living and not living. Who refuse to be boxed, buried, caged. 

Be stepped on by a thousand different people in a thousand different places over thousands and thousands of years. And feel nothing. Be a part of someone's life, and never meet know understand. Watching and not watching, blind and blinkless existence of something that isn't and is. To be part of a memory, and then a chocolate box of memories, and then a scrapbook, and then a tree. Remembered and not remembered. But growing. 

Let the wind blow through you, finally. 

Errare humanum est.

It was simple at first, and innocent. You came with a heavy heart and a wilted frame, rattled bones and a rattled soul. And no one came when you came; just you, alone, with yourself. Everyday a jagged ragged drag to get by, by any means. 

And her, with her quiet pleasures and faint smiles, and her tendency to look away, like she wasn't interested when she was rapt in her daydreams. And with her she brought her careless. She dabbed reckless on her wrists and let everyone take a whiff, of her something sweet and something tangy. She walked around like around was hers to walk on. And when she turned to you, you saw her, luminous. She shimmered brilliant in the day and in the dark. 

You took her and you loved her, loved her well and true, and gracefully -- more than you had ever done anything in your life. She made you feel, didn't she? Like there was more to life than the getting-by's and the have-to-do's. She was a necessity, yes; but she was also a luxury one no one else could afford. 

Little by little, you lost your grace and you lost your gentle. You started to take, and she let you take her, whole. She leapt into the abyss with you -- into your dreams and your plans, and your world where your ways were higher and infinity was a concept you could grasp. She jumped and she fell, and you didn't catch her because you were too busy falling; you forgot that she fell for you. 

When you crashed, finally, you realized that your ways were far from high, and that your world was not one that tolerated dreamers, that infinity was a concept that refused to exist to those who thought it plausible, and that you couldn't live for everything. You became obsessed with your failure. All you did was think, and she laid right by you as you did so. Lying because she hadn't the strength to pick herself up, dust herself off, and show herself out. She loved you too much, too truly.

You who wiped the careless off her lips, smeared the reckless from her wrists, and told her she was all you had when you had other things in mind. And when your thoughts could no longer be contained, you needed to forget. So you left.No grace, not true, nor brave.

And since then she's carved her cheeks out with tear stains and heartache. Sleep.