kill, from a sun came -- olete & ganymede
Oct 19, 2021 17:15:00 GMT -5
Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Oct 19, 2021 17:15:00 GMT -5
G A N Y M E D E
► ► ►
For a long time, I wondered what it would be like to be older.
I remember victors on screen in beautiful dresses, and I remember the Capitolites in their strange, spectral fashions. There was a veneer of silk, an armour of grace. My ambition was to be gorgeous, untouchable.
If I grew up, would I be like them?
Would we ever leave District Nine?
District Nine, where our mother bathed and drowned in the river of morphling with flowers still in her hair, where we never knew of our father or our family name. Where Io bled from skinned knees, then broken bones, and then metal and gunpowder, fighting the eternal wars of the people and the lands before us. Where we were hungry -- hungry for power, for money, for the lives we were promised.
There is nothing pretty about District Nine, about the way we have survived.
When does a girl grow up.
When does a girl stop being a girl?
Was it when I bled between my legs, cried because I thought I was dying? Was it when Io held my hand because we were motherless, and told me as softly as he could -- life began and ended with me, spilled on my thighs, but he was only a boy and had no words for the way I hurt.
Or was it when Ares touched me,
when the kiss I thought I would have was taken by him.
Was it when he killed something in me, dragged it into the sunlight, left it bleeding in the early morning with its throat slit.
But the blood looked different, and I didn't cry, and no one held my hand.
A bird sings.
All my life, I have looked for beautiful things. For gardens and quaint houses, for fresh bread and sweet air, for what it would be like to be in love someday. For leaving this place.
I wanted to become older, to become someone else.
And now,
I do not like the way I have become more than just a stupid girl -- the way I have become his touch and his breath, how I have become just bones scattered by a hungry wolf, licked clean, buried and decaying. Days later, I cried to the daisies and bluebells, told them my secret because there was no one else.
Io did not believe me. Or maybe he did and decided there was nothing he could do. Or maybe he did but he was too high on heroin to care.
One day, my brother stopped being my brother. Like all those years ago, when our mother was swimming in her own mind, lost in the blooming paradise in her veins.
In the end, I didn't mean to take his life, but Ares took something from me --
And there lies a grave in me. There lies the bloodstains and the flies buzzing and the rot and the signs of a cruel struggle. No matter what I do, or who I will become now, there lies the idea that I will never be who I once was. And for the rest of my life, I will have to mourn what it is I lost.
I will be sixteen years old soon.
I didn't know it would be like this.
In the morning, I plant marigolds, feel the sun on my face. The dragonflies shine like prisms through the trees, carrying soot from the factories deep in the district. I touch an orange petal, wondering when anything will ever grow in me again.
A sister knocks on my door in the afternoon. In little wooden boxes, I give the Wolf Pack vials of foxglove and pills of nightlock, chemicals bubbled out from beautiful foliage.
Maybe, this is a life I could've wanted. With the sunlight tangled into my hair and the smell of rain on the grass, I can live here, not wanting for food or power. And I have dreams at night sometimes, of the blood between my legs turning into my body, turning into his hands, turning into the first man I saw shot dead in the streets, and then to our mother lying in the bathtub, drowning.
I have dreams that remind me of the taste of death clinging to his teeth, when I was still just a girl.
But I wake up and smell the flowers. And wonder if I'll be okay.
In the morning, I go to plant begonias in my garden.
But today, different from all other days, there is someone waiting for me there.
I remember victors on screen in beautiful dresses, and I remember the Capitolites in their strange, spectral fashions. There was a veneer of silk, an armour of grace. My ambition was to be gorgeous, untouchable.
If I grew up, would I be like them?
Would we ever leave District Nine?
District Nine, where our mother bathed and drowned in the river of morphling with flowers still in her hair, where we never knew of our father or our family name. Where Io bled from skinned knees, then broken bones, and then metal and gunpowder, fighting the eternal wars of the people and the lands before us. Where we were hungry -- hungry for power, for money, for the lives we were promised.
There is nothing pretty about District Nine, about the way we have survived.
When does a girl grow up.
When does a girl stop being a girl?
Was it when I bled between my legs, cried because I thought I was dying? Was it when Io held my hand because we were motherless, and told me as softly as he could -- life began and ended with me, spilled on my thighs, but he was only a boy and had no words for the way I hurt.
Or was it when Ares touched me,
when the kiss I thought I would have was taken by him.
Was it when he killed something in me, dragged it into the sunlight, left it bleeding in the early morning with its throat slit.
But the blood looked different, and I didn't cry, and no one held my hand.
A bird sings.
All my life, I have looked for beautiful things. For gardens and quaint houses, for fresh bread and sweet air, for what it would be like to be in love someday. For leaving this place.
I wanted to become older, to become someone else.
And now,
I do not like the way I have become more than just a stupid girl -- the way I have become his touch and his breath, how I have become just bones scattered by a hungry wolf, licked clean, buried and decaying. Days later, I cried to the daisies and bluebells, told them my secret because there was no one else.
Io did not believe me. Or maybe he did and decided there was nothing he could do. Or maybe he did but he was too high on heroin to care.
One day, my brother stopped being my brother. Like all those years ago, when our mother was swimming in her own mind, lost in the blooming paradise in her veins.
In the end, I didn't mean to take his life, but Ares took something from me --
And there lies a grave in me. There lies the bloodstains and the flies buzzing and the rot and the signs of a cruel struggle. No matter what I do, or who I will become now, there lies the idea that I will never be who I once was. And for the rest of my life, I will have to mourn what it is I lost.
I will be sixteen years old soon.
I didn't know it would be like this.
In the morning, I plant marigolds, feel the sun on my face. The dragonflies shine like prisms through the trees, carrying soot from the factories deep in the district. I touch an orange petal, wondering when anything will ever grow in me again.
A sister knocks on my door in the afternoon. In little wooden boxes, I give the Wolf Pack vials of foxglove and pills of nightlock, chemicals bubbled out from beautiful foliage.
Maybe, this is a life I could've wanted. With the sunlight tangled into my hair and the smell of rain on the grass, I can live here, not wanting for food or power. And I have dreams at night sometimes, of the blood between my legs turning into my body, turning into his hands, turning into the first man I saw shot dead in the streets, and then to our mother lying in the bathtub, drowning.
I have dreams that remind me of the taste of death clinging to his teeth, when I was still just a girl.
But I wake up and smell the flowers. And wonder if I'll be okay.
In the morning, I go to plant begonias in my garden.
But today, different from all other days, there is someone waiting for me there.
