the temple does not deserve my body

[thompson harvard - d2b - arc]

I always forget about the little dude who had flown by my side since day one. Blood-red, mechanical whirr, I quickly began to tune it out. It was annoying, and for the most part, what did it have to owe me? What did I owe to it?


The only time I noticed it very closely was during the first night. It stared at me when I sat there, writhing in pain and surprised that I hadn’t died earlier that day. Buzzed. Floated. And stared at me. I fuckin’ hated it. Did I run? Did I stay? Even if I wanted to run, I couldn’t with my knees.

After moments of staring at the guy that night, smoke billowed like a cigarette’s breath, and I awoke to health.

I never paid my dues to it. It should get a name. The only thing left has been with me since day one. But I don’t know what it could be named, and I don’t want to name it. It’s like seeing an old dog or cat roaming the blocks. They’re just some sweet, old, precious little things that want to be shown love in the moments they have left. You want to take them in - I wanted to. I’d go up to my momma, eyes beady and hands folded, begging to give them a home. She’d say no, despite my pleas, and I’d be left to watch it limp around for a few more days before never seeing them again.

If an old dog meant much to me, how can I name a damn bug?

My spear is still covered in the girl’s blood. It all happened so fast that I want to choke on air. I wish I had some button, some way to pause the world. Give me a moment before my fate becomes slimmer and slimmer, to where I leave this cherry-pink place purgatory. After today, with most Games’ calculations, there will be four. I lean against a pillar of this abandoned temple, breathing, smelling the air that feels so clean for a place that’s so goddamn dirty to all of us. It should smell like smoke. Like broken, burnt lungs. Like the parlor room that used to be filled with my momma’s packs. She died after my dad left, and ever since, she’s been like one of those half-washed-up bodies of the catacombs that the tributes of the 85th woke up in. My dad made her whole and grounded her.

She always had him in her trials, and in the midst of my hardest, all I have is a damn bug.

I need the smoke of disappointment, my soul abandoned. I need Woods, who, next to a bug, would be my biggest support. I fear my mother’s abandonment of me. I worry that she saw my departure from this world as my father’s. We know that he isn’t dead. He might as well be, given how swiftly he departed. House of paintings to cover punched walls, and broken windows, he was the artist that crafted the blanket.

But now I have a temple: a broken, dismembered temple where Gods used to be worshipped. I was no God, but I played their game, their sacrificial requests—the blood of a girl’s eye licked onto my spear. If God was real, I hope he, she, they were satisfied. But I know that my sacrifices do not equate to those of Haizea, or Brennan, or whoever else is alive. I’m just a damn poker loser. A game had decided my fate. This was all a game, just like back home.

But I’m not into playing superficial games. Not outside of the League.

I reach into my bag, fumbling with it until the pastel pink tablet meets my hand. I got sponsored a game to distract or support the game I was playing. But I am tired of playing games. Life, my life is not a game. It’s a need. It’s all that my mother has left. The cliff's edge is near enough to where I toss the tablet off, I watch it descend, its parts scattering like I assume Francine’s body had the day before. All I have is life now, and I no longer feel like gambling my life away. The temple requests life, but it will not earn mine.

The blood-red pest buzzes, and whirrs, and it fulfills the silence of Dorothy and Svetlana and Elm - all these people that did deserve a temple for their strength. I don't swat it away. It's the only loyalty I have left with me. For the temple, I am not loyal. I am no God. I never will be.

[kaitlin]