that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried
It has not gotten easier with time.
It has not gotten easier with the passing days. He wakes each morning as though coming through a fog with the taste of death and decay on his tongue—dust in his throat. What he had hoped would be just a fluke of an evening has turned into the rhythm of his life and he finds that he cannot escape it. The pull of it underneath every move keeps dragging him back under, filling his lungs with the heavy weight of it.
He stands this morning, golden sides heaving, eyes closed against the coming dawn.
There is the sound of something approaching and he clenches his jaw, the muscle jumping. He wants to tell them to go away. Wants to tell them that there’s nothing for them to find here. He is as empty as the grave that he could be filling every night. But the words wither on his tongue when his golden eyes open and find the sweet, young girl staring back at him. He swallows them and buries it in his gut.
A rough laugh escapes his throat at the sound of her question and it takes everything in him to pull on the cloak of casual arrogance to shield his vulnerable underbelly. It was a facade he knew well. The one that should have been the truth of him. It was his birth right, after all. Instead, it settles like a shell outside of the anguish that thrashes within him as he gives a cavalier, crooked smile that does not reach his eyes.
“I’m just enjoying the morning,” he lies, feeling the wind prick at the drying sweat on his coat. He shakes and the dust escapes from where it had settled into the crooks and curves of his youthful body.
“How about you?” He tilts his head. “Are you?”
so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried
