There is so much screaming.
It drowns out the rest of everything, because the noise becomes all that there is. It feels like earthquakes in her ears - it feels like continents splitting into pieces, it feels like countries consumed. But it’s only black birds. They only swarm circles above her head, diving and climbing in ways that are too erratic for prediction. They only swarm circles above her head, singing songs about the losses they’ve known.
And there have been so many.
There have been so many that she cannot help the kinship she feels with them. They cry out the names of their lovers like she cries out her own. They circle, again and again, and she remembers all of the years she has spent chasing herself in circles, but then the thought is quickly overridden when his eyes meet her body. She can feel him burning holes through her flesh, and it makes her shift her weight from hip to hip. She has never liked being seen – it’s always been in the wrong ways,
She is a victim. She is a lover. She is prey.
The shift between them then is palpable. She holds the change in her palms, and clasps her fingers tight. ‘Here is anywhere, and anywhere else is everywhere. Which is it?’ He says, as he binds them in a cage crafted of bone and flesh instead of iron. He doesn’t frighten her. He isn’t the things that she has known. The things that she has known never given apologies for making contact with her skin.
“You sound invested,” she says, weighing feelings out across the expanse of her tongue. He does, but it doesn’t scare her. She’s used to men asking things of her she can’t possibly promise. It was all part of the deal. It was all part of the baggage that came with loving things you should not love.
“I’m running from something,” she says – not someone – and the words are as weak as the ‘I can’t’ from seconds before, barely audible over the hum of life all around them.
“Promise me that she won’t come for me, and I’ll stay. I’ll be yours. I’ll be whatever you need me to be.”
Because the beat of her heart keeps her awake at night. Because she’s so tired of running. Because he’s looking for an answer that she can’t give him. Because she’s never belonged to anything bigger.
Because she’s never belonged between the boundaries of politicians.
spyndle
you are the prettiest thing that I will ever know