we’re trapped in a garden of endless flowers
Perhaps he has always known she did not love him. That she did not love him, but an imagined him that lived in another world with her.
And perhaps he has always known that the thing that existed between them was borne only of hunger, of violence, of life chasing after death chasing after life. There was a time when he would have known what it made of him, to lean into this monster’s side while somewhere, another monster that is not so different from this one rots in a cell at his command.
There was a time when he would have done anything to keep himself from loving a monster. All he had wanted as a boy was to grow a garden for all the orphans of the desert like him, when he had been soft, when he had never been able to stomach the thought of killing another for his own hunger.
Now he has killed, and he has consumed, and he has watched the darkness creep further and further up his throat despite how hard he tried to swallow it down. Now he has invited the monsters into his woods and let them turn to death the things he would give his own life to protect.
He’d like to say that he turned then, that he pulled himself away from her side and ran from all the things that did not love him (the unicorns, the desert, the people bred from hardness.) He’d like to say that he remembered how to be soft, and how to love instead of hate.
But he only lets himself be pulled along after her. And he listens to that song that exists between only them. And he watches a soldier whose death he has already dreamt of.
"wilting // blooming"
@thana
And perhaps he has always known that the thing that existed between them was borne only of hunger, of violence, of life chasing after death chasing after life. There was a time when he would have known what it made of him, to lean into this monster’s side while somewhere, another monster that is not so different from this one rots in a cell at his command.
There was a time when he would have done anything to keep himself from loving a monster. All he had wanted as a boy was to grow a garden for all the orphans of the desert like him, when he had been soft, when he had never been able to stomach the thought of killing another for his own hunger.
Now he has killed, and he has consumed, and he has watched the darkness creep further and further up his throat despite how hard he tried to swallow it down. Now he has invited the monsters into his woods and let them turn to death the things he would give his own life to protect.
He’d like to say that he turned then, that he pulled himself away from her side and ran from all the things that did not love him (the unicorns, the desert, the people bred from hardness.) He’d like to say that he remembered how to be soft, and how to love instead of hate.
But he only lets himself be pulled along after her. And he listens to that song that exists between only them. And he watches a soldier whose death he has already dreamt of.
@thana
