She turned.

She turned. Too fluidly for it to be accidental and too robotic for it to have been planned, and yet she did it. She turned away. Her eyes drawing across dusty surfaces and forgotten ornaments in order to wash the disappointment from her pupil. It was slow; almost all too real, and yet still so distant and rehearsed. She wore a mask made of butterfly wings and broken harmonies upon a face once so vividly portrayed as a masterpiece. She hid behind the beauty of things she couldn’t possibly possess in order to remain truthful to her own mind and soul. She hid behind the broken atrocities of someone else’s life in order to remain the fortified mess of hormones she had grown to rely on.

Dragging dirt from beneath her fingernails, she tore herself in two. One dreaming of an existence where music played and passion erupted on the corners of dimly lit streets in the rain, the other resigning to the fact that streetlights shone too brightly and cameras buzzed too loudly for the moment to be sacred. Raindrops fell too similarly to tear drops. Corners had too much of a point. Fear held too much power over her; the shadows leering and spitting. Someone could get hurt and she learned a long time ago that that someone would be her.

Night falls, lingering mournfully on her paling skin; Moonshine casting a glow of empathy on her curved neck and rigid shoulders. Her eyes glossed with the turmoil of an aging veteran and the brightness of a million heart breaks. I cried. I couldn’t help but get lost in the words that she wasn’t willing to share with me. I couldn’t fight the pull of a million hands begging for me to break the chain that encroached on her ability to love. I moved towards her; uncertain footsteps bringing our bodies together. Skin to skin, we stood. Her gaze not lifting from a figure in the distance, her head turned in shame.

She turned. Broken and forgotten, every item was dragged out in her line of vision until it blurred. Tears refusing to fall -memories refusing to dissipate. I turned; so enveloped in her movement that, without realising, I began to mirror her actions. Smoothly, I wrapped my mind around hers, my arms too, while she stood in silence and allowed the danger of regret destroy what was left of her composure. Screaming in absolute silence, her body slowly shook – taking beatings from the words she left unsaid and the bone cracking violence of people she let slip away. I wrapped my body around hers, begging for attention, pleading to be allowed a chance to have captivating eyes fall on me. She barely noticed.

She sighed and she turned. Falling into an abyss where the overcrowded remnants of thought soaked up the energy she once had and disabled her ability to hope. 

Graveyard

Glistening blocks, moist from dew and silhouetting an endless escape from reality, sat between visitor debris and trodden patches of grass. Store bought stones resting in plots of family pride, lilies of varying colour and life expectancy dangling precariously from painted glass urns, and yew trees with leaves so vividly green they almost hurt the eye to look at. A grey sky loomed overhead, as intrepid footsteps were slowly made through the maze of past lives.

Leisurely, a small girl walked, her hand held tightly by a dark haired man, a stubby hand pointing to dates and names. A game, almost, was made of who could find the oldest plot, who could find the strangest name, or who could find a connection to the world in which they lived. Excited whispers and affectionate glances sullied an otherwise unbroken peace; awakening the magic from within the engravings and throwing them like wishes into the serene surroundings.

A projection of life; an assumed play by play of the lives, with which they were toying, as they plucked small details from fragmented life stories and sewed them together to reanimate their corpses. Men, women and children surrounding them, tugging at their clothes and begging for air. The childlike curiosity flitted across the girl’s eyes as she invented entire lives, her hair catching in an unfelt wind and waltzing above her head; spinning and curtseying to an unheard song. 

Unsaid words clog at the back of dead throats, choking the fragility from the young girl’s wisdom. Her eyes, barely blue, widen at the strangulation of a century’s worth of suffering; a hangman’s rope woven with secrets of corruption and greed. Sponge-like, she soaked in the pain of hundreds and volleyed it through her tiny mind in order to lighten the load. Twisting and searing, the memories scarred her from the inside out; leaving silver lines of anticipation on her already burned body. A spectrum of light burst from her pores, lifting her from her standing and floating her into a realm that beckoned forward sympathy. The dark haired man, her father, left standing, watching as she disappeared; lost to him forever. Indifference marred his kind face, the lines of loss deepening around the eyes he had given his first born, and propelled her further into the intent of independence. Their shadows swimming in circles, a sparring of sorts, before gliding in opposite directions; their souls immortalised in the glisten of a cold morning’s mist.