*/
I swear to god
I wasn't born to fight.
Maybe just a little bit.
Enough to make me sick of it.
I wasn't born to fight.
Maybe just a little bit.
Enough to make me sick of it.
Michael prefers the markets baked by sunlight: the sleepy steam rising from stall after stall, long evening shadows cast the length of a street. If he looks in one direction he can see all of Denocte as it should never be, a blanket of bagged fabric waiting to be set out for the night and slowly boiling pots and the sluggish pace of merchants plodding to work. The markets at night make Michael into a trapped animal - he cannot place why it draws him in the way that it does, because his bones shake and his skin crawls and he can barely breathe for all the internal howling.
But Isra asked him, Michael, will you stay, and Michael is nothing if not sworn to agree to anything that she could ever ask of him - that anyone could ever ask of him. He is thankful that these days he barely draws attention at all.
He is slightly more buoyant.
(A tired bird, awash at sea, waiting and waiting and waiting with the end circling below, and his fellow scavengers above
(but not a drowned bird, not anymore - not a bird that sits with sand in its lungs, sand like cement-- a heart like cement.)
It is as if the world turns on an axis that dictates the weight of his skin and he does not know what sometimes makes it feel as if he is knee deep in mud and then sometimes allows him to feel the warm sun on his back and think words like peace. He suspects he will never knows. He knows only that no matter what phase of the moon or turn of the tide or pleasant smell on the breeze (cinnamon and vanilla - one bakery that cannot wait for the sun to swing low) he is always tired. He knows only that no matter how tired it is, it still does not allow him to sleep.
And this is why he is perched here, the thick curtain of his mane wrapped in a bun and secured by the iridescent blue of his scarf here as the hottest part of the day lays itself down to rest - and Michael is drinking tea.
And he is so, so tired.
But Isra asked him, Michael, will you stay, and Michael is nothing if not sworn to agree to anything that she could ever ask of him - that anyone could ever ask of him. He is thankful that these days he barely draws attention at all.
He is slightly more buoyant.
(A tired bird, awash at sea, waiting and waiting and waiting with the end circling below, and his fellow scavengers above
(but not a drowned bird, not anymore - not a bird that sits with sand in its lungs, sand like cement-- a heart like cement.)
It is as if the world turns on an axis that dictates the weight of his skin and he does not know what sometimes makes it feel as if he is knee deep in mud and then sometimes allows him to feel the warm sun on his back and think words like peace. He suspects he will never knows. He knows only that no matter what phase of the moon or turn of the tide or pleasant smell on the breeze (cinnamon and vanilla - one bakery that cannot wait for the sun to swing low) he is always tired. He knows only that no matter how tired it is, it still does not allow him to sleep.
And this is why he is perched here, the thick curtain of his mane wrapped in a bun and secured by the iridescent blue of his scarf here as the hottest part of the day lays itself down to rest - and Michael is drinking tea.
And he is so, so tired.
@
