[open] swallowed the sickness

[brigade]

I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
I was a sinner and you were a snake

He is numb, but he was never meant to be an unfeeling thing. Heavens, how he wishes that he had been—how he wishes that he could have been. He wishes that he could simply put his heart in a box and never hear from it. How he wishes that he could simply amputate that useless muscle from his body; simply dig a knife into his chest until it pops out—a poor, dull beating that thrums uncontrollably in his head.

But he has no such luck.

No such kindness.

He is, instead, constantly wore down by the thing that thrashes against the ice that encases him. It sets fire to him, protesting the winter that now bears a heavy hand upon his spine. He grits his teeth, burying deeper in the cold so that he can continue to wear this mask of indifference.

There is a flash in his storm grey eyes as they look to her, something that belies his stony expression, and he schools his features as quickly as he can instead. Thinks about the girl before him who is sculpted from the thing that now defines him. Oh, how natural it rests upon her shoulders. How delicate winter looks set upon her brow. He is so graceless in his fight against nature; he nearly cannot recognize it in her.

“So many things,” he says, an attempt at delay poorly disguised behind his steely gaze. This would be the natural pause for a chuckle, for a breathy exhale—something charming, perhaps—but he has no such skill. Instead he lets the silence stretch to a nearly uncomfortable degree before allowing:

“Disappointment, if you were to ask most people who have crossed paths with me.”

shook like some old souls when our bones broke
swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame

BRIGADE