if i could change, i would. || isle

[Offspring]

something has been taken from deep inside of me;
the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.

  Quietly and easily, the evening begins to fade, the frayed edges of a starlit sky giving way to the gentle light of the rising sun. Volcanic ash sifts gently on the ground below, merging with the soft and fertile soil that lay beneath and pressing firmly around the minuscule, jagged edges of each footfall. Entrenched in the remnants of another pyroclastic flow, he can feel the heat of pooling lava near the very base of the volcano, and though the stream of it is winding away from him, the light breeze carries its warmth across the plain. 

   Faint beads of sweat trickle across his dark, but flawed flesh, as the puckered pink scars glimmer beneath the rays of bleak sunlight that has slowly begun to push back the shadows. His powerful legs push him through the long, wavering tendrils of dry brush that lap so delicately at his skin, leaving hives along his sensitive flesh and leaving him even more irate than before.

   The vivid, haunting memories of his grim nightmares plague him still, evoking an uncomfortable tension from the depths of his thick, rolling muscles, leaving an old and familiar ache within his bones. Each bittersweet memory had yet to fade with time, and only left him more weary and tired than before. He spent too many hours, too many days attempting to keep the demons that lurked within the bleak and bleary recesses of his mind, desperate to conceal the way his dark secret unraveled him from the very seams. 

   He could still remember the acrid, metallic taste of blood, and his heart would clench each and every time his mind recalled how sweet it had been. He could still hear the rigid, curdling screams of torment, ringing sharply in his memory. He could still feel the surge of adrenaline; he could still feel the trembling of the ground beneath him as his mind and body waged a war he had never chosen to fight.

   It all remained too clear, too vivid, and so he hid away, exhausted from his constant, unyielding attempt to hide such gruesome visions from the one his heart loved and yearned for most. He could no longer envelope himself in her warmth and gentle caresses in the dead of night; he could no longer ward off the deep loneliness nor his darkest thoughts - he was weak; crippled by the intensity of his own anxiety and shaken by the distant, but dully throbbing bloodlust that simmers in his veins. 

   Festering silently within his own misery, his breath catches as his own burning eyes meet with hers as she remains still, the beauty of her brown eyes gleaming in the warm sunlight of morning, his heart leaping into the hollow of his throat. It hammers against the confines of his rib cage, steadily increasing its rhythm as his mind become rampant with thought. He can feel it splintering, fragments of his heart becoming fragmented and undone, a deep ache settling in between the gaps. 

   It is not often that he is gone so late that the sweeping grace of dawn drapes itself across the midnight sky, and never had she been awake upon his return. An unnerving dread gently thrums at his heartstrings with dexterity and finesse. A breathless, "I'm sorry," is all that he can say, his usually deep and ragged voice caught in his throat, and his dark red eyes boring into hers with regret.

wounds so deep they never show; they never go away.
like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.

Offspring