i'm just here to fight the fire, plumeria

[kensley]

i took the poison praying you'd feel it, too i wrapped my neck and prayed that you'd feel the noose It had taken him days to get here. All he’d wanted was the comfort of home. Or, more specifically, the warmth of his mother’s embrace. Something he had not longed for in so many years. And when he’d arrived, all he’d felt was disappointment. This was not the home he’d left. It was ravaged and changed, but he was, too. He was not the same wayward soul who’d left it. He was no longer the good-natured boy who’d gone in search of something – or someone – some years before. There is a darkness in him now. An unshakable sadness. It seems strange that his useless heart should be able to beat beneath the weight of it. Some days he’s surprised that he can move at all. He does not what to do but wander around the meadow, the only place he recognizes anymore. He is aimless now, focused only on what it takes to put one foot in front of the other. He does not deserve relief, he knows. Perhaps this is his real punishment – being condemned to living with this for the rest of eternity. And he’s all right with that. He happens upon her by accident. The shock that courses through him arrests the air in his chest and he finally gets his answer – the lungs do ache with want when he does not breathe. He staggers toward her,  gasping for breath the same way his sister had. And when he reaches her, the knees finally buckle. “Mother,” he gasps. He’d know her anywhere. He sucks in a sharp breath and presses his forehead against her knee. “Mother,” he keens, his eyes squeezed shut. This is a mercy he does not deserve. That she is still here. That he can collapse beneath the weight of his grief and his guilt at her feet. That he can beg her for forgiveness. shattered son of jarris and plumeria