pilate
/
the house seems to circle around you slowly. i circle around you, a wild / animal near a fire. i remember / i would kill for you. i remind myself / it won't be necessary.
So often I miss being a child.
Not that my childhood—any of ours—were normal. Even my very first memories are tinged in gold and green, money and envy. Everything I can remember from childhood has been smoothed out, enough to lose the detail, and overlaid with shiny plasticine perfection of a life lived in the noble circles.
Everything except for this. The comfort. The normalcy. The innate knowledge that this has not and will never change: my head against my favorite sister’s shoulder, so relaxed and heavy I feel like I might fall asleep. I am never safer or more at peace than I am here. I know the warmth of her body against my cheek; the smell of fresh linen on her skin and perfume in her hair. I know the relaxed pattern of her breath, her ribcage rising and falling against my shoulder.
She is the only part of my life—present, past, and future—that loves me more than the mask I wear. Maybe because she is the only one has ever seen him.
"The only thing I ever do, brother, is cause trouble and wonder what you are doing. Sometimes both." I laugh. The sound bubbles from my chest before I can stop it. My real laugh—loose and warm and unrestrained, full of affection for the only girl I’ve ever loved properly. And in my too-large room, it echoes and echoes and echoes before slipping out the open window, and it feels almost like a storybook whose pictures I loved as a child—a world venerated by moonlight, where I am not a prince, or head of house, or tenth in line for the throne, but just myself.
“What kind of trouble…” I muse. My voice is exaggeratedly, jokingly thoughtful, and I even trail off toward the end like I’m absorbed by my confusion. “Oh, I know. You’ve tricked another poor boy into falling in love with you.”
I pull my head from her shoulder to look at her directly. My eyes glint and mouth splits into a grin lined with tease. I want her to say yes; I want to know.
I want her to ask me, too.
