whatever it takes to drown out the noise, dove

[rembrandt]

you and i nursing on a poison that never stung our teeth and lungs are lined with the scum of it Everything, she says. And it is not lost on him how she has avoided his gaze. He can feel the sadness rolling off her in waves. He can taste it on the air around them. Even if he couldn’t, he would hear it in her voice. His focus is steadfast, unyielding, and he wonders idly what could have bred such uncertainty in her. He is young, certainly, but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything so beautiful. He feels only a distant twinge of guilt when he thinks that her sadness contributes to her beauty. The softness in her gaze, the slant in her smile, the fact that he wonders if he could feel the sadness in her heart should he press his mouth to her breast. “And what makes them so special?” he asks. “And what is wrong with being exactly who you are?” He tilts his head and he touches her again, lingers this time, before he pulls away and considers her question. There is a kind of smile playing in the corners of his mouth as he rolls a shoulder in a shrug, turns his gaze up to the sky again. He drags in a steadying breath and exhales it long and slow. “Where else do I have to be?” he asks but this question is a rhetorical one. “I’ve just left my home,” he admits after a beat of silence. There is no sadness in his tone, no sense of longing or mourning. It is matter-of-fact, really. It had been time to go and, for him, it was really that simple. He presses his mouth into a thin, thoughtful line and he shrugs again. “I guess I never wanted to be like them,” he muses, quiet, contemplative. stardusted son of despair and astral