saturated sunrise; nyte

[Deleted]

I do not see the sunrise through the pane glass window.

My mother lent a hand in helping me to lay heavy boards across it in the span of four years’ time, splintering wood across a fragmented reality I did not wish to see with the passing of twenty-four hours. Seven boards and twenty-eight nails later and not even the slightest ray of six’s comfort could break its barrier.

But this did not give way to darkness.

Instead I lined white washed walls with colors of every shade, pinned to plaster and dry wood between the cracks in the corners and my sanity. My mother was the catalyst of it all, painting pictures of her own sorrow to pin alongside my own. Filling every square inch of blank space the only incentive to be found we spent the evenings with cans of water turned muddled colors of our emotions only to splatter the remains upon the floor. A mother with a daughter lost— there was symbolism to be found in it all.

Sidewalk chalk turned to watercolor— they all bled one into the other, paper edges overlapping like the tears in our heart. She lost a husband to a time turned to stand still, with a daughter on her hip and a shade of red bleeding from her heart that I could not replicate on even the purest of white paper.

But, oh, did I try, painting pictures of band aids to stick across the tears in my mother’s paper skin, as if the imagery of a daughter’s imagination run rampant would stitch more efficiently than needle and thread. But she insisted I did, tacking pictures of sunsets and garden paths across the front door as if my heart was the most prestigious art museum the world had ever been graced to see.

Paper skin of my own I was to hold a thin heart and my hands and watch the colors bleed, purples running into blues of a different shade— I suppose inheritance is accidental. But whereas I could connect the dots across my skin in the shades of similarity between my mother and I, I was left to paint question marks in the margins of my skin, wondering where my father’s identity ended and my own began.

I found him in the sunrise, so I split the glass and asked my mother to cover the window.

Seven boards and twenty-eight nails later, I no longer saw him in the walls I filled with a thought of my own, ideas and concepts blurring one into another like the paper edges never separated.

It seems my mother had never been able to distinguish the two to begin with.

So while she was tacking hatred to a heart of my own I was left in the guise of her innocence, paintbrush in hand and empathy in mind. The nights we spent on wooden floors with splattered paint and spilled hearts were left to be found with different initiatives. My mother poked at her bruises to watch the colors form while I painted over my own.

The last night we painted together, I found no difference between pure white paper and her porcelain skin.

I had seen the blank space on the back of her hand, quivering in concentration that sat in the silence between us. But she had brought her hand to rest and I saw opportunity and its consummation, resting the tip of my paintbrush stained purple against her skin until I saw color bleed through. Simple movements executed she was left with the sight of a compass to guide her way. Two lines and four letters later she did not speak to me as she exited the room.

I do not see the sunrise when I awake to white washed walls covered by a sin too innocent to be seen.

I do not see my mother in the space left behind, either.

The shell of a woman still trying to find guidance— I had believed the heart of a girl to naïve to know the difference could change the time wasted.

Instead only a vow never to fall to the guise of inheritance I reach for the notepad on the bedside table, pen rolling between pressed palms and the sketch of broken glass. The shattered are most often the most sharp, whether fate to find it in tongue or terror.

But I have neither, left to be dulled by the time it takes to fold the piece of paper four times and press it to the empty space in my pocket before abandoning a room of color to instead find place in a world of black and white.

No words of excellence explained I see the compass on the back of my mother’s hand, reassurance in its rarest form and I find my way down three steps to a path painted in shades of grey. Left hand in a pocket full of contemplation I run a thumb along its edge, yet no shades of red were to be found.

Girl of a different color to my right— I struggle to recognize color outside of its designated place, and I hold out the paper in her direction, “There’s a place for this and it isn’t in my pocket. Perhaps it’s better suited for yours.”

[[nyte]]

K A R E L L A  G R I F O N

There's blood on my palms that won't leave me alone. It sits there, slightly faded rust that I cannot purge myself of no matter how many times coarse cloth has traced the weathered lines. I can see it there, my life line cut so short, a soul that was supposed to be taken many years ago. I would be dead if not for my cowardice. A cowardice that I suppose is gone now, as I stand before death every day and I deliver to him bodies filled with screams and charred dreams.

I'm not a bad person, at least I like to think I'm not. Death is a mere tool, a means to an end, I do not relish the feeling of a life wasted dripping between my fingers and falling with a loud splat onto shoes that I will soon dispose of. Death is a step closer to my paycheck, a step closer to filling my fridge with cheap beans and rice and wilting greens that I can buy on a discount.

I am no more a murderer than I am an addict and a scientist.

But I am both of those things.

I miss the days when labels were so simple. When I was a genius in my own right, able to create and cure even the most complex of illness with boiling chemicals turning the color of the rainbow. We burned them into our skin, Isabel and I. With flames so hot they could not be red, they turned her skin charred and brittle and they forced a cliff face into the side of my face. It is ragged and uneven, like snowy pebbles peppering skin a slight olive shade.

That child did not think she would be here, damaged and bloody although she had just washed the blood off of her flesh. She believed in a world that could be changed. Oh, there was so much pain in this world but she wanted to make it something bearable.

Alas, even then I was an idealist.

This world will never be more than a stain, soon to be obliterated by the next who rise to power and who decide that we are the bugs under the soles of there shoes.

For just a moment, I allow my mind to wander. Past the barriers that have been so painstakingly set, built brick-by-brick to keep others out and to keep myself inside. I am both prisoner and warden, victim and perpetrator. I am the bystander who watches in horror as the world burns, too afraid to scream and too brave to run. I am chaos disguised as order. It's such a tiring facade, walking past these faceless creatures and trying not to wonder if they know that I have just slaughtered a man. Wrapped thin chord around his throat to stop the screams sink somewhere deep into my gut. The noise that I can barely hear but that terrified me all the same. I wonder if they know I had pulled and pulled past his begging until I had taken his words from the bright white that peeked through layers of flesh.

Did I know what this man had done?

Did I even care?

Wondering is such a dangerous drug. Questions more addictive than the heroin that once sent my body into desperate spasms after I had gorged like a man who never tasted in his three centuries of breath. Questions are what lead good men to great conclusions. Questions are what lead even greater men into a noose's gentle embrace.

Six is a wonderful place. Filled with shoulders rubbing and the buzz of footsteps, of people too busy to speak to one another, too busy for friends. Six is a district of secrets and of lies. It is a home made for the likes of me and for many others. To whom the law is a mere suggestion and the peacekeepers are more likely to end up dead than try to stop us.

But today seems not to be as usual. Her voice is like a knife against what remains of my hearing. Beautiful, sharp and silver slicing through my skin as though it were made of dough.
“There’s a place for this and it isn’t in my pocket. Perhaps it’s better suited for yours.”

My eyes find her before I can fully understand from which side the sound came. They take in the whole of a pretty girl with her hand outstretched. Light halos around her, turning blue eyes white in a setting sun. And I try to keep my face something cold, to deny this angel the vulnerability that she seems intent to force into my features.

I cannot.

Without a word I take the paper, fingers greedily unwrapping the present I have just received with something stronger than anticipation. Excitement.

Upon worn paper lays my heart. At least something so broken that it resembles the mess I have become.

My jaw clenches, swallowing back a feeling I do not recognize as my eyes find the angel once more.

"How did you know?" I don't think my voice has ever been so soft.