Lynnika909
My chest rose and my lungs filled up like an airbag. Stretching almost to the point of bursting just to save me. To get me the oxygen I was so damn dependent on. My body, the traitor, forced it into me. Wouldn't give even a second of blessed unconsciousness.
Look down
Peek through smog
Let your eyes search
For something that isn't there
Pick out each particle of dust
Choose one; follow it
Turn it around in your mind
Watch how the light avoids it
See how it filters around, just grazing the surface
Now let it go, you are holding it here
You must realize that sometimes
You can be a prison
Innocent, I know, but not guiltless
Let it go now; give it back its fluidity of movement
Let it return to obscurity
Beneath the smog
In the damp world below
And try not to follow
And I pulled the curtains back and leaned my forehead on the glass and I just watched the people talking and laughing and crying and fighting. And then I think I started crying but I wasn't sad, I felt sort of happy. I liked the feeling of the cold glass on my face, and the snow fell on everyone's head and since I was so far up I felt like I had a bit of a part in making it fall.
As I walked out of the cave, bronze tears streaked down my cheeks and into the salty sea. I watched the liquid metal swirl around and dissipate into the ocean, and I wished I could do the same. My chest felt like it was still of bronze as I left her stranded in the cave, where I literally poured my immobility into her palm. My stomach nervously wrung itself into loops and I braced myself for the dive. I walked further and further into the shallow ocean but the water fluctuated between my waist and my neck, never venturing higher or lower. I walked miles and miles through the choppy, unnatural sea until I finally felt a soft pressure on the small of my back. I began to ran, sprint through the rushing white. Fishing for my knife in my pocket, I expanded my chest with oxygen and I plunged into the water and tore through the woven sand underneath my feet. And then I was on the other side, and I was swimming, thrashing to get to the surface. As I broke through the churning tides, I filled my body with the water droplets woven into the air and I was finally enough.
Suddenly, the rushing waves faltered and all was silent. As I opened my eyes, a shock of bronze gold fell into my view. My heart rose higher in my chest. The night air was to be light from the absence of limitations. The impatient beat of my toes swung my chair to the beat of my heart. And finally, the rocky surface shuddered, and I gripped my wheels to keep from sliding back into the chapped ocean.
I stopped. Her eyes. Her piercing, her beautiful eyes. My God, I had forgotten.
I reached to grab her outstretched hand
But then she was in my arms.
Deprived of her image, I gripped her tighter to feel, rather than see, the shapes of her. I could only hold her closer as a drop of metal landed on my shoulder. I could smell it.
Eventually, she divided our figures, withholding her grip on my arm, just above my elbows. And while she grazed her thumbs across my forearms, there was an instant. A moment of silence, so much deeper than the natural. And I fell. Drowned in the depth. Falling. Thrashing.
Her fingers fell away. Her features dropped. People don’t pay enough attention. Or maybe, they just don’t care. But they don’t understand the sensation of physical connection. And they don’t care enough to try. If I let our molecules intermingle and collide, it is because I trust that you care enough to give them back. And I know that lips and kneecaps are one and the same. But people will brush through crowds and strangers will touch my wrist to make a point. But I guess, maybe I am mindful, maybe I am watchful enough for us all.
I notice. I feel her touch. And I notice its absence when her fingers steal away to her chest to sign my name. And then she leaves. She wades into the unforgiving sea, but I know that someone will come. She told me with her eyes and her hands, someone will save me.
I carefully placed my feet in the contours of sand. I wondered at the glazed, metallic footprints, and I felt my chest expand. This was where he had last placed his steps. This was where he had last been human. The sun dotted my vision until I was overwhelmed by the black of the mouth of the cavern.
My stomach wrung itself out like a towel as I left the sandy bronzed footprints and felt the cold cloudy rock on my bare feet. I felt my vision go dark as I left the light behind me. The sun watched me; it gently tapped on my shoulder, hoping for me to return to its embrace, but the stone grounded my feet, and I headed onward.
There he stood, with his arms encircled around the ghost figure of someone long lost. I stepped into his arms and filled in the negative space in between his upper lip and the tip of his nose, behind his bent knee, around his elbow, and behind his ear.
Almost to slow for me to bear, the bronze drained from his cheeks into my outstretched hand. All at once, the ground disappeared and he stood at the mouth of the cave. I felt cold.
He did not turn back, but I heard his voice. "I will find you a savior," he said. "You will not be the last."
And then I felt my knees stiffen, saw my fingers turning bronze, tasted metal, and felt a cold weight drop on my mind.
I closed my eyes.
The statue stood there with her shoulders held back by some invisible cord. And so I found the negative space between her hair and the back of her neck, between her left arm and her side, between her taut shoulder blades, between her skyward chin and her neck, between her fingers and toes.
As, slowly, her metallic skin turned flesh, she picked up her foot, nd pulled her knee through to outside the shape in which I was frozen, without a word, without touching my skin, without even glance to humanize her savior. And she left me there, a human, forces to embrace the hole that she left, until once again someone might return to this cave.
Before she left into the sunlight, without turning back to face me, her voice cracked as she whispered one thing. "They'll tell tales about you," she whispered, and then, half to herself "someone will find a way."
And then I felt my knees stiffen, saw my fingers turning bronze, tasted metal, and felt a cold weight drop on my mind.
I closed my eyes.
My eyes went blurry. Perhaps from the grief, or perhaps for the pain, but I guess I'll never know. Although most likely, now that I think of it, it was the snow that had just begun to fall. Odd that I never would have thought of that.After all those years, remembering and reliving, and once in a while something falls upon you. Some little tidbit of something. And it feels like you found another piece of yourself to grow into. Like a little piece of the puzzle that is the self you are struggling to find...
It was the best prank she ever pulled. Possibly, also the meanest. And the one that takes up the most space in my brain. Because, I believe it led to the death of Charlotte Lee. It all started with a road trip. And a can of tuna. And also, faux chrysanthemums. But that's not the point. The point is she's dead, becuase of this stupid, stupid prank.
He sought my eyes, but I couldn't look at him. I couldn't stand it. They were too old, too wise. They had seen too much. Because I've never seen a thing. All I've ever seen, that has ever been worth noting, was him. And now I can barely see his face without being assaulted by his history. I should've known. I've waited all my life something magnificent. But he is magnificent like a lion is magnificent. Like a star is magnificent. He is brilliant but he's overpowering. He's too bright. Too fantastic. And, right now, my head pounds with blood as I realize something: it was always going to end this way. He had no way of knowing it, no way of predicting it, and no way of preventing it. It wasn't his fault. And you know what? It wasn't mine either. Just because this is how it happened, and this is how it was always going to happen. Just like that one tree in the forest--that one where a little girl and a little boy used to play--it is now living on your porch. Dead, on your front steps. It was always going to end up as your front door. But not just yours, all of your neighbors' front doors as well, and it's not your fault. Because it wasn't your choice, nor was it your intention. It's how the world works. Everything ends up being something, and even if that something is nothing, that something was always going to happen.
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writing since 2014 · 12 entries · 11 days shown up
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the words Lynnika reaches for
eyesrunnowbronzechestfacefingerscoldflightglassmagnificentcavemetalfeetfelldon