tessellate // december

[Cait]

december nieve

It’s been three years since I bled my heart dry.

Three years since I watched blood pool around me, not caring for the mess somebody else would eventually find embedded in the floorboards of our tattered home, because there was pain and blood was falling upon my own terms and I was selfish and despite the rivers that ran across my veins I was still safe, and that would never be okay.

Three years of waiting, waiting for that karma that I’ve felt in every footstep since I left that Reaping unscathed to pull the rug from beneath my stumbling feet and devour me for condemning an innocent. A girl so much more than anything I could ever hope to be.

Three years of counting the losses I’ve seen litter the streets, and at some point within those three years, I was just as lost as the rest of them.

Three years of replayed memories and gentle breezes through the windows that helped break up the constant streams of yelling, crying, laughing that looped endlessly. Streams of vocalisations we pretended not to hear when they ravaged the walls so mercilessly.

Three years to make something of a wasted life, and all I’ve done is kill.

Lyric was her name.

I didn’t watch. Couldn’t watch. Couldn’t do anything other than what little girls do best – run, hide, cry for their mothers if only I knew how to call to her would I still call for her? Wait for evil to pass before you get the “happily ever after” all princesses are entitled to. But it’s a happy ending I should know will never come, and even though it’s been three years, I still wait. Still can’t watch.

I’m so god damn weak.

Some days call for heavier burdens than others, but I’d endure the weight of the world if only it would break the chains manacled to my wrists.

And I’ve told them, told them it was my fault over and over and over and over again until the words rubbed my throat red raw, but when you’re an insignificant in a world far too vast for you to find your own higher ground within, you’re forever stuck at the bottom of the mountains, shouting to those who just won’t listen.

‘She died because of me.’

‘No, December, it’s not–’

‘It’s my fault!’

Sometimes, I miss them. I miss their soft words that always seemed to overpower my screams. I miss the braiding of hair that I’d always insist I was too old for, despite their fingers being too strong for me to pull away from my scalp. I miss home, and even though home has changed hands too many times to claim a permanent definition within my heart, nothing feels quite so foreign than the confines of an all-too-familiar house without them.

Them. It’s only been a year since they left, one by one, each time leaving nothing more than the slamming of our front doors and whispers of night-time we were too fearful to swallow. That’s all we had to remember them by – running, hiding – and all I can manage for family is a handful of distant pronouns. Tossed into empty beds like the bags of rice January scattered across the grass in his rage, and it’s hard to remember combing the lawn beneath that dying moon with anything more than ghosts, for that’s all that resides here now.

Names, lost to the world. I could have done more to remember them.

Lyric was her name.

And I can’t forget anymore, because I could have done more.

There has always been more, and I’m always too weak to turn the tables of fate, and Lyric was her name and it’s still my fault.

When it was Marc’s name they pulled from that bowl and it was nobody moving to take his place it should have been me beside him because Ripred knows we’ve seen too many lifeless souls leave the place we call ours, shattering fetters in their flight – if only to be recaptured by demons greater than us, the ones they left behind.

When it was finalities, the last breath of freedom inhaled through a straw by a girl I won’t remember, it should have been me because there’s been too many days of solitude with nothing but Marc’s thrashings through the walls to keep us going, and for that, surely we owe him more than the goodbyes we never gave him.

When it was silence and choking on words and imaginary bullets pushing through the air and legs of concrete that would not push forward even if I’d wanted them to I should have volunteered for even though nothing would excuse the cowardice of a former girl I try to forget, it could have been a start.

But it’s not.

I’m so god damn weak.

Walking away hurts. There are some journeys that begin new chapters in lives, some that end others. Some journeys that transport us back in time, and I think it’s those which hurt the most. To accompany my steps are influxes of memories derived from distantly familiar scents. Earthen spoors of dying flower beds like the ones we never cultivated. The celebratory meals of safety from a stranger’s home that remind me of all the cold dinners we used to share around our too-small table. Reminders, and the problem with memories is that too often they prove to be so much more painful than actual moments are.

It’s why we stopped living in the past, why we refused to search for them each time we awoke to another empty bed.

Why we don’t visit him as we leave.

Marc would have wanted it that way. Words I tell myself as I continue to close another chapter of my life with another loss. But I’m not so sure anymore.

God, I’ve grown up, too much, and it’s swimming through the waters of realisation when I grasp for Maye’s hand amidst the scuffling of delayed deaths – a change to how we marched to this bereavement like separated souls – because even those who meet reunions and new beginnings as grown are entitled to some forms of innocence.

New beginnings. It sounded nice.

It could never be enough.