05-19-2020, 03:21 PM
Sabra
I'm back. The cliffs and chasms of Loess didn't hold me long, not when there was nothing to hold on to. I lingered among the sandstone and sagebrush as long as I could before the Voices drove me back out again. My grip on reality has long been tenuous, and I can feel it slipping from my grasp again a little more every day.
"Stop it, stop it, just SHUT UP ALREADY!" My yellowed teeth snap at the air over my shoulder where my daughter's voice taunted me. The shadow of her vanishes as soon as I try to catch it in my sight, intangible as my faulty memory. I've been wandering again, and I look up to realize I'm not so lost as I'd thought. I wish I was though. The river, always the river. The sound of it draws a claw of dread along my spine, flashes of terror gripping my throat. A scar there throbs, where reptilian teeth had gripped me once. Silver lightning marks the place now, flickering erratically along my heartbeat.
The awareness of my locale freezes me in place, the steady drip-drip-drip of my blood on the grass the only sound I make. My chest aches and it takes me a moment to realize it's because I've stopped breathing. My inhale is shrill and gasping, stuttering on the sobs I've been choking down.
I can go so long without crying, replacing the tears with acerbic words and aloof distance. Here though is where my life has find awry so many times though. Where I was once hopeful is now a shrine to my downfalls, and when the tears begin to flow I am helpless to rein them in. Snippets of sound as persistent as biting flies in summer crowd my ears. They call me weak, useless, helpless, hopeless.
I walk to the water's edge, hooves sinking in thick mud while I stare at my rippling reflection. My eyes are large in my thin face, and the fractured stone look has returned to them. If I walk into the deep part of the river and breath it in, will it save me? Will the Voices stop their ceaseless catalogue of my every flaw and failing? Or will they follow me beyond the veil and back again. Death itself seems powerless against this magic. The spear in my chest is stuck fast, blood stained and searing. I am alone, alone with only the Voices for company. And I am too weak for even death to save me.
I wanna be Immortal, like a God in the sky
I wanna be a silk flower, like I'm never gonna die
Photo by Kareva Margarita