one last smoke {Adelaide + Diamond}

[Arrows]

Diamond Nixton

    I beg for a breath, but only gasps grow from my gaping mouth. Familiar is the friction falling from the pools of my eyes. Common is the weight welling up to the size of an ocean in my chest. Normal is the loneliness which blows down any shelters I succumb to hideaway within. She stands upon the stage shining with the secrets of the stars spiraling in the radiant hearts of her eyes. Confidence crawls from the calm composure christening her voluntary entry into Death's favorite game. Her back turns towards me and I feel frozen again in the same snow which silenced my brother. The doors to the building sever the shelter I felt with my skin pressed to her own. Maybe I had made a mistake in looking to find love in a girl who sees more than I will ever know. Maybe I'm too broken to ever be fixed, even by someone who is above belief. 

    Figures flicker through the surging sea of people hugging and happily accepting another person's place for their own. I stand still, my eyes fixate on the fossilized fragments of a time where I was happy again. Yet again another one of my tears stains this street for the second time. My head tilts towards the sky, "Please next time let it be me." I whisper to the wind within a world of happy families embracing in luck. Why will death only deem those around me to be doomed? Is this the life I'm suppose to live? Is this evening living at all? It's torture...

    I can't stay stuck again, I can't miss her like I missed him. My eyes shut, I accept that she's going to die. My eyes open, I accept that I will always live alone. My feet force themselves to step slowly tapping like the ticking of the clock which counts towards hr departure to death. Yet again I'm chasing something beyond my reach, how long will I last this time before I fall?

    They don't even ask my name, I'm no one to them, just another mourner. I see Prism's portrait on the wall and I see his smile, they don't deserve to see it. I sulk away further into the building until I stand outside the door to the same room. It's all the same, another year another death. I turn the knob. 

    I don't let her speak first before pulling two cigarettes from my coat. "Want one last smoke?" I lift it to her with my lighter igniting the sadistic smoke of my death sentence. I inhale its enriching intoxication, she doesn't need to know how I feel about her. Telling her would just bring heart break sooner, I might just be another lost face in a District she wants to leave behind... I lift the lighter towards her. Can't we just pretend its all actually just a game?

[[earthling]]

Of all the people I expected to visit me, Diamond Nixton is the very last. The second she opens the door a flood of failure threatens to derail the unnatural calm I've cloaked myself with. I set the book I've been fingering, passing the time with, down on the coffee table. She's already pulling out two cigarettes when I reach her. Instead of taking the fresh one, I pluck the lit one from her lips, match my lipstick to the stains and drag in the smoke.

I don't remember closing my eyes but when I open them again, she's still there. "Before you go, I gotta ask you one favor. I need you to forgive me - release me of the task you set for me." I shake my head, limp blonde hair flying. "I couldn't find him."

[Arrows]

Diamond Nixton

    Why do they always do this before they die? Apologize. I don't need an apology, I'm not a child who doesn't understand where they are going. Sure, I'll cry when I'm left crippled crawling through the crevice of cruelty known as grief, but I won't be angry at them for any reason. That's not what its like, it never is. All you want once someone is gone is the time stopping touch of their skin against your's one last time. I'm not the girl that remembers those by what they failed to fulfill. I'm a girl who lives remembering all of those which have dropped dead around her, remembering what it was like in a time when I wasn't alone lost in my own maddening medicine's mists. I'm a girl who just wants a single soul to stay alive for a second longer. I'm just a girl whose always beaten, bruised, and abandoned. 

    I snag the smoke back from her lips as I had done before and let it loiter behind my mouth, at least one sickening sensation always stayed the same no matter what else was burning alongside it. Who knows, maybe I'll die early from lunge cancer. I'll start counting the days. I sigh and let a hand file through my bleach blonde strands of hair while I walk to the edge of the window. More hugging, more happiness, a day of joy is what dawns outside the panes and beyond my own pain. Maybe I'll die tonight, isn't that a terribly terrific thought? I turn my back on window's world. 

    "Consider yourself released, I never expected you to find him. If Prism wanted to be found he would be, I'm alone and I've accepted that." My eyes search her own irises' seas for a sentence to say, nothing seems right so I just pick at random and fire away. "If you do find him soon though, tell him I still remember him. I'll remember you too Adelaide, don't forget that either."