04-15-2023, 02:03 AM
i'm torn from the truth that holds my soul
i'm down in the grave where I belong --
To him, they are all beautiful.
Maybe some more than others, but it’s not just that they are beautiful—they are right, acceptable. He had been very young when he first realized that he and his family were the outliers—the strange creatures that did not behave the way the others did. The language his mother spoke was entirely different from everyone else, which only further set him apart. He remembers how clumsy words had felt on his tongue when he had first learned to speak, how it confused him that everyone else seemed to grasp so easily. He looked different, he was raised different, and he did not speak like the rest of them, and to him, that rift felt impassable.
It is still there, in his mind at least, between the two of them. Even when she turns and leaves the river, even when she steps towards him, the distance between them never disappears. She speaks her own greeting, says the very same word he had said, and somehow makes it sound entirely different; smooth and clear, like the word is spun of silk, and not the coarse gravel that his tongue turns it into.
She calls him beautiful, and he does not know how to fill the silence that builds.
His thoughts seem to tangle around each other, and even if he had been better at speaking he is not sure if they ever would have made it into sensical words. He wants to argue with her, or thank her, or maybe deflect and tell her that no, she is the beautiful one. “I don’t think so,” he finally says, the sentence halting and uncertain. It is not really an insecurity; he just knows that he is harsh-looking and strange, and not at all like the things he has been taught are beautiful.
“My name is Fret,” he tells her, studying her face perhaps a little too closely. He always does that, when he actually works up the nerve to speak to someone. “Why were you in the river?”
i'm down in the grave where I belong --
To him, they are all beautiful.
Maybe some more than others, but it’s not just that they are beautiful—they are right, acceptable. He had been very young when he first realized that he and his family were the outliers—the strange creatures that did not behave the way the others did. The language his mother spoke was entirely different from everyone else, which only further set him apart. He remembers how clumsy words had felt on his tongue when he had first learned to speak, how it confused him that everyone else seemed to grasp so easily. He looked different, he was raised different, and he did not speak like the rest of them, and to him, that rift felt impassable.
It is still there, in his mind at least, between the two of them. Even when she turns and leaves the river, even when she steps towards him, the distance between them never disappears. She speaks her own greeting, says the very same word he had said, and somehow makes it sound entirely different; smooth and clear, like the word is spun of silk, and not the coarse gravel that his tongue turns it into.
She calls him beautiful, and he does not know how to fill the silence that builds.
His thoughts seem to tangle around each other, and even if he had been better at speaking he is not sure if they ever would have made it into sensical words. He wants to argue with her, or thank her, or maybe deflect and tell her that no, she is the beautiful one. “I don’t think so,” he finally says, the sentence halting and uncertain. It is not really an insecurity; he just knows that he is harsh-looking and strange, and not at all like the things he has been taught are beautiful.
“My name is Fret,” he tells her, studying her face perhaps a little too closely. He always does that, when he actually works up the nerve to speak to someone. “Why were you in the river?”
-- f r e t
