÷ ... viola

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

 

VIOLA RUINED

It's barren, cold. Heart like a wasteland and head like a war-zone; there's no balance. No stability in which I can find a serenity. It's a hard life, and I guess that at first, when Pixie died, I didn't realise how hard it was going to be. No one warns you of the loneliness the bleeds through your fibres, or the moments where your soul is escaping you but your fingers aren't enough to contain it. When there is no one, there is only you—that's the scariest part about it.

Lorenzo had never fully understood; he's always been the one to bottle things up, keep them close and keep them safe within a wooden chest somewhere. Except he never swallowed the key, and slowly but surely, his emotions have been getting the better of him and we've been torn and pulled and shredded until, nowadays, I don't think there is a Viola and Lorenzo anymore, just Viola, and just Lorenzo.

We grew together, we rose up through dry soils and built ourselves up. Time tells the hardest of truths and I suppose that this is the way it was always meant to be. A girl in a permanent state of mourning and a boy with a firework heart which he is determined to set aflame. Pixie would've set us straight. She only put up with shit like this when her life was dangling by blades of grass over a never-ending void; she would have told us that differences didn't matter and that we were both wrong until we made up, because that, that is the only right.

And where do I stand now?

Hollow eyes are on the television screen and there is a stirring feeling of déjà vu in my stomach. I've seen this all before: felt the same emotions, heard the same solemnities and told everyone that I didn't care, when all along, I did. My own fire was starting to burn, of anger and hatred but I never succumbed to it like Lorenzo. Maybe in some ways, I was stronger. I don't know, it's hard to look back and make a judgement. Maybe it was because I was younger and didn't really understand the extent and significance of the events 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years ago. Someone told me that you learn to deal with it; that you see death so many times and get immune.

They lied.

It's a cyclic world. Things go around and come around, and things never stop going around until you force them to come to a halt. I pray that Lorenzo can do it because there's a stirring feeling of déjà vu in my stomach and I hate it. There's a surname I've heard before, through the speakers of the screen and in my nightmares. Hammerfell is a name that directly contributed to the death of Pixie. I remember calling careers like him thick in the head and I wasn't wrong—6 years later and one with dodgy legs has volunteered and put himself in Mason's shoes.

But I pray that he isn't in Mason's shoes at all, I pray that he's in the shoes of a tribute who suffers a cruel and bitter death because history has a habit of repeating itself and I just don't want the same damn thing to happen again. I want Lorenzo to live; I want to him to live for selfish reasons. I want the two of us to make up so that two wrongs can be proven to make a right. I'm not sure how I could ever live with how we cut each other off and apart, I don't know if I could live with the weight of knowing it could've, should've been me instead.

The drama unfolds and it does not fail to put me at the edge of my seat, fingernails between my teeth and stomach spinning with nerves. 

I hate this, I hate this cyclic world. For taking me back 6 years, for forcing me to face my fears, for—

—doing the same thing again.

I'm not bottling it up this time. I sit alone, in a crumbling house which has sown and reaped my two siblings, and I cry.

Ripred, I wouldn't have lasted five fucking minutes if Lorenzo is going to die in the moment they are showing on screen. The tears run down my cheeks, the salt stinging my skin with more and more strength as they go. I don't wipe them away, nobody can see and I don't have anything to lose anymore. All I knew and valued is going to lie in two boxes in the ground. Bodies, bodies, just pathetic bodies that tried their best and did not succeed. Resilience is the greatest condolence prize but it never came last time and I doubt it will the second time—they say third time is the charm but I'm not losing anyone else, I don't even want to lose a stranger.

He coughs up blood and I realise that the petals have been taken by the wind and that the roots have been tied. He's going to die.

A cannon sounds after he goes out in the only way he knew how: with a smoky, sorry and sore bang. His rage filled his final words and I hate it, I hate it so much. Seeing him so weak makes me wish I had a time machine or a way to help him, comfort him and to tell him something I never would have told him in life. I doubt he would've appreciated it: telling him that I love him. He would've wanted a cigarette or his lover boy to make him go out with a literal bang. But they say that family is your rock and they are right; despite the sibling rivalries and arguments and cold shoulders—he had always been there. And I've learnt not to take someone's presence for granted after Pixie died.

I turn my back on the screen. I feel responsible.

He'd still be alive if I'd been more vocal at the Reaping. Brothers are supposed to protect but sisters can do it too; I should've ignored him and gone to the Capitol out of spite, to save his life. If I'd have gone, things would be different. Everything would have played out differently and perhaps I would be the one lying in a pool of my own blood, helpless and hopeless on the ground, and not him. I wouldn't make it far but I would have died knowing it was going to come, with dignity and acceptance and I think that's the only pleasure when you put yourself through so much pain for protection.

If.

I tell myself.

I take myself to bed. It's cold, barren and I don't say goodnight to anyone—there isn't anyone to say it to.

I lie awake, I can't even cry myself to sleep.

I just think for hours.

Days.

I'll think about it forever—if.

If.