"seemed no longer love or anything happy
but a monster between them,
with each of them caught in a fist.”
but a monster between them,
with each of them caught in a fist.”
And maybe that's the true meaning of being a monster: drinking the sea with thorny chains and rotten roses tangling up my legs like roots.
When the silence goes on too long I almost want to pull the toll of it from her skin in kisses and teeth. I want to tell her that it doesn't have too be like this, like queens staring at each other with bloody lines carved into the sand between them. I want to tell her a hundred things but I understand too why she's like this. Of course I know it's my fault and as much as I hate her for it, for the way even looking at her with the thud-thud-thudding in my chest feels like the the worst thing I've ever done, I cannot help but look at what I've done.
It's like the way the sea can't stop looking at the shore even when it knows the rocks and the sand will never look quite the same every again. Over and over the sea looks, and tastes, and takes, and the shore is still dies in its beautiful way. I wonder if I've always loved the rot or if all the lash and chains of my old life made me love it so (or maybe it was death, or Raum, or suffering).
But looking at her reminds me that there are all these lines between us. Even though I do not want them to be they are bloody, and tainted, and too endless to be called straight. I pull back across that line she's swung between us like a metal chord begging for skin. My ears lash like a whip into my mane and I know the fires are still pooling golden in my eyes that are surely flashing something romantic as war at her. I'm not sure what look my lips are making but oh I hope it's not a sneer, I hope it's a scythe cold as frost and sharp as a snowflake. “I knew.” My words taste bitter, like fruit fallen too early from a tree and left to rot in the rain.
Part of me wants say that I'm sorry for the knowing, for not coming to see if she was doing well, for wiping the sadness from Eik's eyes instead of hers. It feels like swallowing a fiery blade when I don't. The words don't die like they should, only smolder. That bloody line between us yawns and shows me its teeth.
Somewhere a harp is playing, and I want to touch her hip like I did once. To show her that it's okay to feel something other than blackness, and sea-cold. I want to tell her that it doesn't have to be like this.
I want, I want, I want--
I pull back and all the roses at my feet turn to smoky quartz as gray as her eyes seem. When I inhale I try to make it look like I'm only pulling in jasmine air instead of pushing out a sob. “How is your court faring?” The words I want to say though, are not those, and I can feel them in the corners of my eyes like tears.
@
