03-20-2022, 02:59 PM
these days i don’t pray when i close my eyes—
Watch him cast those glacial blue eyes upon the folds of earth, the valleys, and wonder where he might find her.
(He has not seen her since before, learned only in passing of her resurrection, and thought of how he had failed her, too. It must be embarrassment that kept him from her, the yellow belly of his cowardice.)
He emerges but he does not wish to be seen. He emerges but he shackles that dodgy gaze to the earth underfoot and does not lift it. (Because he cannot bear to think that they might look at him, that they might perceive him, that they will know just by looking at him that he has failed all of the most important souls in his life.)
There is no death worse than any other, but this one twists a knife in his chest. This one is a blade cutting away the meat of his heart. (He had fled her death just as he had fled Este’s inevitable demise, just as he had fled Mazikeen’s.)
He sways on his feet.
He does not know where to find her.
So he wanders back to the place where it all started. There in the darkness, where his mother had curled herself around Este, bled herself dry just to breathe life into his sister. And he had gasped for air at the edge of the forest, desperate for relief.
How dare he show his face here?
But he has to apologize. Because he had not known, because he had not stopped it, he had not warned her.
He rounds a bend in the high light of afternoon and the place looks so different now, though it still reeks of death. But he drags in a long breath, lets it pollute his lungs, holds it hard and fast as he finally lifts his gaze from the dirt.
—I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@Ryatah