Mom might be right - any

[Offspring]

something has been taken from deep inside of me;
the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.

  He is quiet.

  He is a silent, statuesque figure tucked away into the shadow of evenfall – his dark, marred flesh soothed by the darkness and its delicate caress. Once upon a time, he had relished in the sensation of the bright, hot sun pressing its fervid heat into his skin – he had savored the sensation of its warmth seeping into his flesh, as he so often felt anything but warm while enveloped by the brutality of winter, shrouded by cloud cover and covered in frost.

  The sunlight did not often touch the ice-laden land he had once ruled, and so on the rare occasion it managed to peek through the heavy clouds and past the high mountain peaks, it was an affable surprise. He longed for those days, now long gone, with little else but fading memories for him to clutch onto.

  But much like the icy tundra he had once called his own, his yearning for the sun no longer existed – it reminded him too much of the flickering ember inside of him; it reminded him of the hot flame threatening to burn through him. It reminded him of the very same scalding heat he desperately tried to quell, wary of its prowess; mistrustful of its influence.

  And for that, he shies away from the sun, preferring the dark allure of the dense thicket instead.

  He is still; motionless and pressed firmly against the girth of an old, crooked pine – and he is towering; so much so that a wiry, brittle branch has tangled itself within the matted tresses that lay haphazardly along his neck. He is lost in his own thoughts, filtering through memories – filtering through both reality and the nightmares that so often plague him, wondering why he cannot discern one from the other.

  But he is not alone.

  He is stirred from his silent reverie by movement, and his eyes – a dark, but searing red, glowing in the dim light of the forest – follow the dark figure, tracing the curve of her hip and the swell of her expectant belly with his stare. She, too, is alone, muttering to herself – or so it would seem. But there is something familiar in her stature; something familiar in the hollow of her cheek, and in the rounded edge of her jawline.

  It is not until her cheek is turned that his heart, once a steady hammer inside of his chest, nearly comes to a halt and drops into the pit of his rolling stomach. Draped in darkness (her coat is as dark as his own; pitchless and yet flawless, unlike his own), with the very same glowing, burning red eyes as his own.

 But all he can do is watch as the mirror image of himself traverses before him, unsure of what to say –

 Unsure if there is anything to say at all.

 ”Congratulations,” he finally manages, his voice rough from disuse, and ragged with undiscernible emotion, as his eyes never leave her own – uncertain if she had even noticed him.

 And inside of him, the fire flares, growing and building with a pressure that burns brighter than he has ever felt.

wounds so deep they never show; they never go away.
like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.

Offspring