02-04-2018, 07:37 PM
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane; She looks out at something, a brief nostalgia crossing her features. He almost asks, but then she turns back to him, responds to his nonsensical explanations. “I just worry,” he says, “that if I forget too much, I’ll lose myself. Or part of myself. But maybe it’s a part that should stay lost.” He wakes sometimes from nightmares. A woman’s shriek, blood on the sand, a sudden blackness. Touches of bodies, bodies gone, a boy, shivering in the cold. Another boy, on his knees in prayer, sunlight on his back. A woman smiling as a piece of her skin falls from her cheek. Things best forgotten. Maybe he could forget. Could drown those hints of memory, that persistent feeling of sadness. He could drown it and then maybe it wouldn’t be wrong, to be here in the meadow with her. If he was someone else, maybe things wouldn’t repeat. How much of yourself can you forget before you’re not yourself? (What if you never much liked yourself, anyway?) It’s a fantasy, perhaps. A trick of the mind. Because god, she’s close, so pristine in the meadow, and the smile on her face eclipses all the wildflowers. “Showing you this makes me happy,” he says, soft, “you, being here, makes me happy.” It’s always so quick, with him. He shouldn’t. But he touches her. His muzzle to her shoulder, tracing the line of bone there, from shoulder to wither. He pulls his muzzle back. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry.” Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. |