[mature] things we never thought we could be, adna

[adna]

and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs

She wishes she could say that looking at him was like looking at a mirror.

She wishes that she could say that she has a semblance of the nonchalant apathy that he wears so easily; she wishes that she could claim it and wear it like an armor. But despite the scales that coat her and the fangs she bears, she has always been a hideously vulnerable girl. She has always been so deeply aware of the hurt around her and the different ways that a heart can break and she has felt it all—felt it all.

So even though her face remains hard—nearly cruel—it does not look apathetic.

Even when he shrugs and gives her an answer that she can sink her teeth into. Instead she feels a strange kind of desire; something that wants to tear him apart to understand him. Does he know all the hurt that she does? Does he break along the same faultlines? Do the earthquakes cause the same tremors in him?

She has no right to ask these things, to demand them, but she has not cared for her rights. She has not bothered to understand her boundaries with this stranger and perhaps that makes it easier. Perhaps it makes it easier that she doesn’t know him and he doesn’t know her. Maybe in this moment she can find some sort of absolution in his presence or understanding or just a moment of peace from herself.

“Do you know if you’ll ever know?” and she hates the way that her words sound pained on the edges. She hates that she sounds so weak—that there is so clearly a bitterness curled around each and every syllable.

“Because I don’t know where to start looking, and I’m so tired of not knowing.”

adna

we're setting fire to our insides for fun
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home