It is Sunday when she tells him.

He knows this because on Sundays, she speaks to him thrice, when on the other days, he can only hear her voice once. That makes him sad, but no matter how big of a fit he throws, it is always the same.

You’re not going to make it, she says, and he thinks he could hear her voice wobble . She shifts, adjusting her weight from one side to another and exhales.

He cannot see her of course, not in the darkness that clouds his world. But he can feel her, it’s strange, but he can. When he is bored, which is often, he would try to imagine how she looks. Oddly enough, all he can think of is a big black mass. Or perhaps that is becuase black is the only thing he could see. Thinking about this makes his head ache and so, he stops.

He can hear a strange sound now- several sharp intakes of breath and then a loud, shaky exhale, again and again, accompanied by an odd whistle.

She is crying, he realizes.

He wants to comfort her, but she won’t listen. He tries to expel the words from his mouth, but they get lost in his mind. He breathes out the sound with his tongue, and they disperse down his throat.

You’re not going to make it, she says again, less shaky this time. A small pause.

That’s what they’re telling me, and I don’t want to believe them, but what do I know, right? She laughs, tentatively. David tells me it’s for the best, she continues, that it’s not worth the risk. Another pause. I wanted to slap him when he said that, believe me, I was so angry. He thinks to himself that he can feel her smile.

He is happy that she is angry at David, and he tries to smile too. He doesn’t like David. David takes up far too much of her time. Time she could have been spending with him. David can go to hell. He smiles again with the self-indulgent satisfaction at having imitated an expression she uses quite often.

It is a Sunday, and she has talked to him thrice, and everything is alright. If what she has said bothers him, he cannot remember.

When he sleeps, he dreams of obsidian eyes and a woman dressed in white scrubs, except they are not really white, he only knows that they are white, inherently, in the way you know that the sun is hot and that ice is cold. She is saying, over and over again: you are not going to make it.

…

Days pass, uneventfully, or perhaps it is months, he does not know. She tells him of the small, insignificant details of her life, those tiny details that make up a life. He is content, but there is always something lurking under the happiness. A certain anxiety, a fear, of something he cannot remember.

But then, he cannot remember a time without the fear either, so it blurs into the background, just white noise.

The voice comes, day after day, predictably, the only other constant in his day, apart from this fear. For those few minutes with her, he can relax.

…

It is the days when the voice doesn’t come that it truly disturbs him. Something is wrong. She has not talked to him yet, even though it is time: it is the day after Sunday, and she is about to go to sleep, and she has not spoken. She shifts from one side to another, the same jostling movement that usually precedes their time together, but the voice does not come. Not a single caress, not a single murmur.

He thinks perhaps she has forgotten, and he shakes her, gently, trying to catch her attention. She does not respond. Harder now, faster, faster, anger clouding the fear, and he likes this sensation better. When he cannot move anymore, he stops, and waits for the sound of her voice. A gasp, and then the same whistle, the harsh outtake of breath, a succession of nasally breaths.

He feels bad now. He shouldn’t have done that.

He lies as still as he can but seems like forever before the crying stops.

…

When she finally talks to him again, she tells him that she is sorry, and there is finality in her voice, a passiveness, an absence of any emotion.

He is filled with an overwhelming , inexplicable panic. It flutters inside of him, this strange, desperate sensation, like a moth beating its wings against a glass cage.

But the next day, she is crying, and there is relief in her tears, and happiness. When she speaks, she seems almost angry, but not at him, it is a positive anger, brimming with energy, she is alive. He does not understand what is going on, but he cannot help but feel that something big has happened, something metamorphic.

Afterwards, he does not remember any of this, except a lingering sensation of solace, and the absence of an emotion he cannot place.

…

In the Lilac Birth Suite, London, she lays on a bed lined white, dressed in white scrubs, in a room tiled in white, white everywhere. With each contraction, there is a pain that dominates her entire being, precious seconds stretching into eternity, primal agony drifting in waves towards her. When she closes her eyes, she can see only red and then flashes of white bursting into being. She hears nothing but a high-pitched, irksome scream, and she wishes it would stop, and then she realizes it is coming from her.

One last guttural push, the heat of stretching flesh, and that is it. There is a flurry of white around her, like geese, she thinks, though she cannot remember whether it is geese that are white, or something else. It seems important, now more than ever, to decipher this.

She breaths out, and the sound seems eerily loud to her ears.

The room is deathly still, she realizes, the sharp tinge of held breaths straining the air. A second passes, maybe two. A tear escapes out of the corner of her eyes, and she cradles her arms around her, desperately, too exhausted to do anything else.

David steps towards her, hand hovering above her shoulder. There it is, she thinks, bitterly. The I-told-you-so. This is what they’ve all been waiting for.

And then, they hear it.

The sharp, keening cry of a newborn.

He has arrived.

…

There were a thousand candles burning when you’d started. A single wick stood unlit amidst them.

One candle for each story you’ll write, she said. And one flame for each night you’ll live.

What happens to the last candle? you’d asked, pointing to the unlit wick.

A life for a light, she’d said coyly, and then disappeared.

You never thought much of this at first.

When the night fell and the stars rose, shadows dancing on cold stone, you’d dip your pen into the inky darkness of midnight and bleed.

And when the stars tumbled down at the rise of a new day, streaking the skies in strange shades of pink and violet, the story you’ve told would cease to cling to the page.

It’d scatter into the air, invisible wisps of pure magic that’d gallantly drift off your desk, out the windows, into the world.

The story you'd bled would no longer be yours.

You’d feel as though you’ve ripped off a limb, every time; strange, how you can never remember pain, each day bringing a raw, fresh agony.

Part of you would want to leap up and haul your words back in, clasp it close to your heart, into your thoughts again, where it was safe, from criticism and reproval, but you’d know that it was futile.

A story once written belongs to the world, and to the world alone.

Left staring at the empty room with an undeniable longing, a sadness mingled with a quiet resignment, there’d be nothing you can do but dip your pen into the night and start, yet again.

...

Those first few years, you were happy, even as the words faltered, the flames flickered, as your pages were dotted with blots of ink, torn angrily at the edges.

With a pen in your hand and a story in your heart, you were happy, but come the break of dawn, with the last song of the nightingale; the wax would have melted into a tiny puddle above which a flame flickered. Flikcer, flicker, and then out.

A flame for a night. A candle to write.

And there were other hurdles that chose to reveal themselves, as the candles vanished into pools of wax at the caress of sunlight.

You'd looked into the mirror one day, and saw yourself fading, fading, into the light.

Your shadow had seemed pale, as if it were muted. It was when a tear fell from your cheek and vanished before it touched the stone floor, that’s when you knew, for certain.

As your stories came alive, you were dying.

Your time was running out, grains of sand slipping smoothly into the hourglass, faster, faster, falling through your fingers as you grasped at it, desperately.

Your time was running out and for a candle to burn, you needed a flame. The candle that stood unlit would never blaze. What would happen to the story it held?

In the brightness of the days, left alone with your thoughts, no story to distract you, you could never forget, never dream of anything else other than the words that wouldn’t be written, the tale that would never be heard.

The fear, it was paralyzing.

You’d watch as a thousand streams of silver weaved their way into the shadows, burning, searing. Flecks of dust rising into the air, forming their own patterns as they drifted aimlessly upwards, like tendrils of smoke. The light reflecting off glass panes to form a thousand rainbows, each one lapping over the next.

And all you could think was: Who would tell the last story after you were gone?

Wisps of shadows danced with the swirls of light as they retreated into the edges of the room. In the corner of your eye, another candle slumped, wax dripping onto cold stone, and then vanished.

Sometimes, your arm outstretched, you’d try to capture the heat of the day in the cup of your hands. Perhaps, you thought, naively, you could light the candle yourself, buy yourself the last story, just one more night to tell it.

You never could though, no matter how tightly you’d clasp the heat within your palm. It’d burn, burn and then drift out from between your fingers, to join the fires that raged around it, darting defiantly around the unlit wick.

A life for a light, she whispered, only a life for a light.

You wanted to scream.

...

There were a thousand candles burning when you’d started. Now, there are only two.

Two candles. One flame. Two stories left. But only one more night to live.

When you peer into the mirror, you cannot see your reflection anymore, and your shadow seems to have blended into the stone floor.

If you wander more than a few feet away from the fire, an excruciating pain courses through you, leaving you heaving, gasping for breath.

The last stars rise as the last night falls, and you write, of course.

You write the last story you will ever tell, your hand trembling as it slides across the page, a tear splotching as it falls above the page, never quite touching it.

You write because the pen is in your hand, and it is the only thing you can hold.

You write because a spark of a tale is in your heart, and it is the only thing you feel.

You write because it is all you know to do.

The nightingale croons its last song, and the single flame flickers above the pool of wax, your life along with it.

You close your eyes and expect- well, you do not know what to expect- but that is not what scares you.

It is the thought of the one tale left untold, the desolate candle that will never burn.

The flame flickers once, twice, and then goes out. You squeeze your eyes shut, trying not to feel, not to think, to just let it happen.

A minute passes, maybe two.

Your lashes flutter open with the wariness of a cripple attempting to move his limbs for the very first time.

The last flame is gone. But the unlit candle is burning. It is unearthly, this fire, ethereal in its beauty.

A life for a light, she’d said.

You are still here.

Here, you think, but not quite here.

You are everywhere at once, in the voices of a million storytellers, in the words of a billion books, in the minds of countless readers, here and everywhere.

It is then, that you realize.

The last story is You.

Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash

Night falls and the stars rise.

The warm dusk fades into dark, a single seamless brushstroke. The air is chilly and crisp now, just a hint of soft caramel wafting through.

In my mind, you are standing in the centre of the chaos, though perhaps that is only a reconstruction.

The night seems to fade out from you, as though you've leeched the colours of this world and captured it within your soul.

The night mist billows around, making you seem as though you stand among the clouds.

The light you cast flutters like a moth, extending its warm silken glow to the chosen few upon which it falls.

If this world were a kaleidoscope, you would be the momentary confluence of the reflections, the point at which everything ends and begins.

When my eyes catch on you, this muddled life settles into place, like a lens coming into focus, pieces of a puzzle that finally click.

You are the apex of my sphere, the cornerstone of my being. Underneath your gaze, I am grounded, yet flying; shackled, yet free.

You are the echo of a tune that I have never heard, and it both bewilders and enchants me. You are the fleeting recollection of my dreams: fading, fading, as I scramble to imprint it into memory.

You are the only thing I crave, the sole want of my life.

...

So take my hand, and I promise you art. You will be the canvas of my prose. I'll dip my pen into the ink of your eyes, and engrave myself onto your heart.

Let me take your breath away with the heat of my passion. I want to taste that infinite second between life and death before I breathe air back into you.

Let me plant a smatter of kisses within the most intimate chambers of your soul. I'll watch them bruise and bloom with the flush of desire.

Let me stop your heartbeat with a flick of my hand and hold- waiting a moment too long- before blood whooshes back into your aching veins.

Let me squeeze my fingers around your throat, and gaze into your eyes as their lustre fades. The light that you once clasped would leak out from you, and gush into me.

I'll press a single finger to the kaleidoscope of your world and watch the delicate glass crack, a spiderweb of a fissure making its way across your life.

I'll watch your world slowly crumble, tremors advancing inwards, until there is nothing left. But you.

Clasped in the palm of my hand, I am the only air you can breathe, the only stimulus for your heartbeat.

I am the only light in your eyes, the only voice that will soothe your cries.

My blood mingling with yours, we are one flesh, one world. Mi casa es tu casa. And what is yours is mine also.

You are stripped away, of everything that once shielded you.

No light.

No colour.

Only You.

Bare.

Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash

It was autumn in the city of Charleston, South Carolina when the Civil war finally struck Morris Islands. William could hear the winds shrieking and moaning as they swept through the countryside, leaving the tress barren in their wake. The sun was cold and pale, throwing down weak lances of light that didn’t quite touch the ground.

William reached out a thin, trembling hand to ring the bell that sat next to his bed.

In his prime, he had been quite handsome: tall and broad-shouldered, with sharp blue eyes and brown hair that teased the sides of a firm jaw.

People had whispered that he had never once smiled, not in the thirty years since he had first arrived at the Tarly mansion, but William knew that was nothing but fishmongers’ gossip. In fact, those thin, pale lips had curved into something resembling a smile twice: once when he was told of his inheritance of the Tarly lands owing to the untimely death of his father, and second: when his first and only son had been born: the illustrious Michael.

Now, though, his face remained as stoic as ever, his eyes hard and severe despite the sagging skin beneath it. His body bulged in the tunic he wore, his belly flowing over his leather belt. His cheeks were sunken and hollow. Ninety-two years had taken their toll on him.

He rang the bell twice again, annoyed.

“No fear of any of us, not anymore,” he croaked underneath his breath.

A man scurried in, holding a tray bearing a glass of wine and a silver bowl. The metal clattered as the the man's hands shook.

William was not known for his patience.

When death was knocking at his door, however, he found he had no time for such frivolities. All that had ever mattered to him was his land and his son. His land was all but lost- the war was not going well for the Southerners- but he could not afford to lose his son as well.

He dismissed the man with a flick of the hand and leant back on his bed. Gingerly picking up the glass, he brought the wine to his lips, when a knock sounded on the wooden door.

“Come in.”

“Master, the Commander has arrived. He demands to see you at once.”

“Send him in.”

A man in a blinding white shirt and a lamp-chop sideburn walked into the room.

“William.” He nodded curtly. “How are you?”

“Half-dead and dying, Commander, that’s what I am.” William harrumphed, setting down his tray and attempting to stand.

“There’s no need for such formalities. Sit, sit.” The man paced the room nervously before sitting down himself, clutching a tiny, ornate box in his fist behind his back.

An awkward silence followed.

“I came to speak of Lieutenant Michael.”

William straightened.

“Yes. My son. I’d sent word for my son to return. I’d like to see him once. Before I-. He is to take my place after. ”

The Commander was silent. He loosened his iron-grip on the tiny box, almost bringing it out front, opening his mouth to speak when William cut him off.

“The Doctor said I had but a week left. Would you deny a dying man his last wish, Nelson?” William asked softly.

A flicker of pity flashed in the Commander’s eyes, gone so fast, William half-believed he had imagined it. The Commander straightened, crushing the box in his fist, his voice firm.

“It can’t be done. The country needs him now. Not a man can be spared.”

William’s eyes hardened, all traces of friendliness gone.

“Michael has served the country well, for all his life. As have I.”

“And he shall continue to do so. All who are capable of fighting are on the battlefield. Thousands have died. Thousands of more will. The dead do not ask for rewards. We all do our duty and the country expects nothing less.”

William’s voice was velvety smooth. “Must I remind you, Commander, that the bulk of your provisions come from my lands.”

The Commander flinched. “If you withdraw your support, the country will have no choice but to take it from you by force. We would prefer for this to remain a pleasant agreement. But you must understand, we will not hesitate if it comes to that.”

“What I do understand is that you do not have the men, if it comes to that.” William remarked. “I am a dying man, Nelson. What will I gain from refusing to help my homeland? I only wish to see my son, just once, before I leave. There is no need for any unpleasantness.”

“No. There is no need.” Nelson sighed. He set the box down, out of sight of William.

“Write him a letter, if you will, and I shall see that it is delivered.”

There was no mistaking the sorrow in his voice now.

Why was he behaving so strangely?

William attempted to push himself off the bed, the effort sending him into a fit of coughing. A man rushed to help him, handing him a glass of water and a handkerchief. The white cloth was streaked with blood when he handed it back. When he recovered, he closed his eyes and leant his head back on the headboard. His voice was tinged with anger.

“A letter. 30 years of service, more than half my life’s profits to the army, and a few empty words is all I get.”

“It is more than most fathers got.” The Commander replied stoically.

William glared into his eyes, spitting on the marble floor beside him.

“A letter, then.”

He clapped his hands twice.

“A parchment and a quill.”

The man handed the paper over to him.

William bent over the page, writing in smooth, elegant penmanship. He faltered once or twice, grasping for words to convey emotion that couldn’t be reduced to ink, but finally managed to get the ordeal done with. A single tear had stained the parchment on the lower right corner, making the ink there bloom and spread across the parchment.

The Commander looked away at the rare display of emotion as he rolled the letter and sealed it, clearly uncomfortable.

“I will see that it reaches him. You have my word.”

William nodded, his eyes hostile.

“Is there anything else I could do for you, William? For old time’s sake?”

“I would like for you to leave, Commander.”

Nelson opened his mouth to speak and then closed it, nodding.

“As you wish.”

He clutched the box in his hand and got up, tiredly. He seemed to have aged a decade in the past half-hour.

As he turned his back to leave, William erupted in a fit of coughing once more, blood splaying everywhere. Nelson whirled around. The marble floor was streaked with red, and William was bent over, clutching his chest as he heaved. His breath whistled as he inhaled, the coughs loose and wet.

“Call the doctor. Now.” He ordered, before rushing to kneel beside the bed, grasping the man’s hand in his.

“Listen to me, William. Just breathe through it, the Doctor will be here any moment. Do you hear me? Breath, William-”

“Commander.” William wheezed in as he spoke, blood clogging his lungs. “The letter. Give it to- to him.”

“I- I will. Stay with me, William, the Doctor’s on his way. Your son needs you. Do you hear me? He needs you to be alive. For him.”

William shook his head, smiling ruefully for the third and last time in his life.

“D- damn you, Nelson.” Those were the last words he ever spoke. He coughed again, and blood splattered over the Commander’s white shirt.

The door opened and the Doctor rushed in, hustling to the man as the Commander moved aside. After a few moments, the coughing subsided. The Doctor turned around and shook his head. The silence in the air was heavy with grief.

Nelson walked over and closed William’s eyes softly with his palm, muttering a prayer.

“He was a good man.” the Doctor offered quietly.

He sighed. “That he was.”

He sat down next to William’s unmoving body. Blood dripped slowly down from William’s chin to the white bed sheets. After a moment, Nelson took out the box and opened it.

Inside were ashes.

“Commander,” the Doctor began tentatively, “His testament, the will, did he write-”

“The lands will be given to the government, along with all his property.”

The Doctor frowned. “Didn’t he have a son? Michael-”

The Commander looked up. Tears glistened in his eyes. He gestured to the box. The Doctor’s eyes widened.

“I-I tried. That’s -that’s why I came. I tried to tell him. He loved his son. If it was the only good thing he did, he loved him. How could I tell him now? I spared him that, at least. It was the least I could do.” The Commander’s voice broke off.

The Doctor was silent. “How-”

“On the field. Last week. Bullet wound. It festered. I promised I would keep him safe and-”

He closed the box and set in on William’s chest, tenderly placing the letter next to it. A tear dropped over the blood on William’s shirt, blooming red.

“Bury him with it.”

The clock struck midnight and she was gone.

There was no spark of light, no crackle in the air, not a single silver shoe left behind.

She had simply vanished- vanished, not dead- when just the second before, she had lived. Her arms had hung limply at her side, breath held in, eyes fixed firmly on the clock as it ticked, closer, closer.

11:57

11:58

11:59

Voila.

And I was there, in the very place that she’d relinquished, breathing in the air that had whooshed out of her lungs, feeling the phantom touch of her, tingling.

Sparks of guilt and anger flaring up, uncalled for and unwelcome.

I felt like a snake slipped out of its skin; pristine in a way that is distinctly unpleasant, the knowledge of my own transience clouding the loss of my former skin.

You are reborn, renewed, they would say. Replaced is more like it.

She was gone, and I had never met her, never seen her. And yet, I knew her, like no else ever had.

She was a memory as faint as a song in a dream, a certain inexplicable sorrow accompanying it. If I pictured her, it would only be as a bright unravelling spool of colour that hung from the cusp of recollection, fleeing away into the wind at the slightest threat of capture, tangling in the smatter of stars ahead.

And she would never return now, her time here was over. Over. That grandiose thought, the utter finality of it, it scared me. I had taken her place. And I would follow.

The longest hand of the clock reached twelve, and I was a minute old.

I had just twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes left.

I wonder if the one after me would remember.

When the last leaf fell, the world hushed. It was a smattering of silence, each barren tree telling the next one to quiet down, the wind itself holding its breath. The sunlight waned in, as if it couldn’t bear to witness the macabre.

The leaf fluttered in the air, and the tree seemed to sway with it, as if it were coercing it to stay. One pull, then another. And it broke free, floating gently to the ground in a strange, oscillating motion. When it touched the floor of crackled, fire-bred leaves, a sigh escaped the Earth.

Natalie Shutterman blinked. Once, twice. The leaf was gone, fading into the backdrop. Her hand rested on the railing, head bent almost imperceptibly to the side, hair falling in soft waves, cradling her in a golden halo. Her hazel eyes were glazed, as if in a drowsy sleep. She was beautiful, stunning even, in a way that caught your eye only the second time.

Now, she appeared frozen, a breathtaking portrait, an elaborate sculpture. Something was wrong. Her movements were too stiff, her eyes too glazed. Her knuckles were white on the sill, hand clutched almost desperately to the railing. If you tilted the lens slightly to the left, you’d see the edge of the gunbarrel pressed to the back of her head.

At 5:06 a.m. the streets were empty, and the few people who jogged by, feet pounding on the pavement, arms pumping back and forth, were caught up in their own world. At 5:07 precisely, a muffled gunshot cracked into the air. Her hands left the sill, fingers reaching out, mouth open, eyes wide. Her body dropped to the ground with a soft thud, head bouncing off the tiles. Two pairs of hands: one callused and rough, the other slim and undoubtedly female, dragged the body away.

Natalie Shusterman: female, age 28, model/actress, IQ 82, number 0000000001 was down.

The clock struck midnight and she was gone.

There was no spark of light, no crackle in the air, not a single silver shoe left behind.

She had simply vanished- vanished, not dead- when just the second before, she had lived. Her arms had hung limply at her side, breath held in, eyes fixed firmly on the clock as it ticked, closer, closer.

11:57

11:58

11:59

Voila.

And I was there, in the very place that she’d relinquished, breathing in the air that had whooshed out of her lungs, feeling the phantom touch of her, tingling.

Sparks of guilt and anger flaring up, uncalled for and unwelcome.

I felt like a snake slipped out of its skin; pristine in a way that is distinctly unpleasant, the knowledge of my own transience clouding the loss of my former skin.

You are reborn, renewed, they would say. Replaced is more like it.

She was gone, and I had never met her, never seen her. And yet, I knew her, like no else ever had.

She was a memory as faint as a song in a dream, a certain inexplicable sorrow accompanying it. If I pictured her, it would only be as a bright unravelling spool of colour that hung from the cusp of recollection, fleeing away into the wind at the slightest threat of capture, tangling in the smatter of stars ahead.

And she would never return now, her time here was over. Over. That grandiose thought, the utter finality of it, it scared me. I had taken her place. And I would follow.

The longest hand of the clock reached twelve, and I was a minute old.

I had just twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes left.

I wonder if the one after me would remember.

When I look into the mirror these days, I see You.

I squint into the glass- or You do, rather- trying to picture what I should’ve been.

I can will myself into existence, I know I can, if only I know what to will.

Stupid, stupid, how could you forget?

A hand comes into the frame and touches the tip of my face, or your face, should I say?

I stop to contemplate this.

The face does not belong to Me, no. I am merely wearing it, on lease. Your face, then.

This hand, it smoothes over your skin- the skin that I wear, but is in reality yours- a quick check up for the vitals, a certain curiosity. A pulsing heart, a functioning brain, mobile limbs. All there. No immediate danger.

And here’s a viable explanation for this: for now, I have simply become You.

Who ‘You’ are, I don’t know, but I am certain of the ‘for now’.

It's a comforting thought, this assurance of evanescence:

For now, I am You.

Later, I will be somebody else or hopefully, Me.

Me, me, I say, but who is Me?

Think, you idiot, think, it's right there.

And then, I feel it. Something riding in from the periphery; storming in, a picture, a song, a memory of a memory.

I feel it like a tide on turbulent waters: a tiny roll far, far away, but bringing with it a promise of devastation.

Closer, closer, then a scream, louder, louder, louder. A nail scraping a chalkboard- riiiiip. I can’t bear it, I need it to go, I just can’t.

Pull, uproot, close your eyes, shove it out.

I blink, then silence. The tide is gone.

Out of sight, out of mind.

There, all good.

Now, where was I?

It all started as a game.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a people-watcher.

As a child, I would watch people for hours before even attempting to talk to them.

I’d scrutinize how you spoke. What you wore. When you laughed. What you liked. Whom you talked to.

I would watch and watch, try to figure out who you were. What you wanted.

And once I put together the pieces of your identity, I would form my own, making sure they clicked.

It was like a puzzle that only I could finish and it amused me to have that sort of power over you: to control exactly what you see.

But under all of that, I’d ensured that I was that girl:

The girl you want to speak to.

The girl you share all your secrets with.

The girl you like.

. . .

I flit from one person to the next, as graceful as a butterfly.

Always smiling. Always pleasing.

You come to me when you don’t have anyone else, and it’s my shoulder you cry on, it’s into my ears you whisper your darkest secrets.

I soothe. I comfort. I encourage. I motivate. I charm.

And when I’m finally alone, I laugh.

I laugh at the world, at how gullible you are, to think you know me, to trust me the way you do.

I laugh till I cry and then I cry till I can’t breathe.

The tears never end, it seems, they flow and flow relentlessly, leeching me of everything.

The real joke was on me, all along.

And I’d never realized.

. . .

I look in the mirror and don’t recognize the shadow that looks back into my eyes.

I don’t ‘like’ her.

In fact, I despise her.

I see myself wrapping my hands around her throat and squeezing until the light slowly fades from her eyes.

And then, I realize the girl is me.

The irony: I’d gained the affection of everyone else, only to realize that I couldn’t win me over too.

Alone, I’m a coward. I’m despicable. Spineless. A doormat. A hypocrite.

I morph myself to suit the people around me. My very identity is built on everyone else’s desires.

I’m no one without someone to please. Nothing without a task to complete.

And there is nothing left of ‘me’ now, of the person I could have been.

Before. Before all the masks.

When I look back, all I see is crushed dreams, and when I look forward, I see an eternity of nothingness.

But it’s what I see when I look within that truly scares me.

Underneath all my masks, I am faceless.

Originally published on themidnightember.wordpress.com

There is a castle I live in, with glass walls that kiss the sky.

It holds clasped around it an air of mystique, of whispered secrets and hushed murmurs, cloaked around those four glass walls no one has seen within. There are no doors and windows. No way of entering at all. The glass is tinted, so that everything inside is merely a grey blur.

Inside: the grass is dead, the air stale.

. . .

Each day, I step outside, and I am remoulded, recast into different flesh, en vogue.

I step outside and my shadow is lighter, as though I have left a shade of it behind.

I step outside, and my world is anything I want it to be.

I can be one amidst a million again, a thread blending seamlessly into the cloth. Or I can be a single streak of silver against black.

. . .

I am a storyteller: telling fairytales of life inside the grey, never lying, nothing true.

Look at the tapestries, I entreat, flourishing the cobwebs that hang from the ceilings.

I am an enchantress: weaving threads of magic in place to fabricate my own reality.

Look at the grandeur, I urge. How the walls stroke the skies, crystal glistening in the moonlight, outshining the stars.

I am an architect: setting stone upon stone, carving a world into being.

Look at the glass walls, I whisper. For you shall see nothing beyond it.

I am anything I want to be.

. . .

Your eyes widen, in awe, in admiration. In wonder.

It a heady feeling, that sense of being put on a pedestal, as if the laws of gravity no longer apply to me.

As though I could fly as long as I don't look down.

I can no longer stop, I have gone too high to fall.

I cannot bring myself to care.

I can fly.

Which is the dream now? Which is the lie?

. . .

Then one day, you arrive. You knock at the glass, hand rapping sharply on the walls with no doors. I do not respond. You should not be here.

You knock again.

Silence.

I hold my breath and then sigh, leaning against the walls.

Footsteps echo into silence. You are gone.

I am relieved. Relieved of the truth, of how close you came to seeing it.

But there is a twinge of something I cannot identify right there. Regret? Longing? It is not pleasant, whatever it is, and I dismiss it.

I have only a second's warning when glass explodes into the air, cracks spiderwebbing along the walls.

You walk straight through: through the tinted glass, the façade of castles and fairy tales, tapestries and skyscrapers.

Lies.

You do not flinch.

Not when the glass shards pierce through your skin, blood dripping onto the dusty wooden floors.

Not when you take in the cobwebs, the damp, musty smell of neglect.

Lies.

I want to scream. To rant and rage. To throw a fit.

You are not supposed to be here.

I say nothing.

The balance has shifted. The power is in your hands.

I want to strike out like a cornered animal, glaring into your eyes, challenging you to make a single misstep, longing for you to just give me a reason to be angry. It simmers just underneath the surface, underneath this overwhelming shame, the guilt.

My pedestal has gone, and I am falling, falling. I look down.

I am Cinderella, without the -ella, only ashes.

Exposed. Vulnerable. It’s too much. Too soon.

Silence.

And then you make an obscene comment.

Laugh.

Offend.

The transition is smooth. Seamless. There is no hitch, no falter in your steps. No pity in your eyes.

The air is stale, the grass dead, but you are the same.

I am grateful.

. . .

There is a castle I live in, with glass walls that kiss the skies. There are no doors and windows, no way of entering at all. The glass is tinted, so that everything inside is merely a grey blur.

I pause for effect with all the grace of a serial-gossip about to reveal the biggest secret of her infamous career.

But there are ways, I whisper into your ears. Cracks in the glass.

I nod emphatically for emphasis.

Who knows? One day, she might let you in.

Originally published on themidnightember.wordpress.com