I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
I was a sinner and you were a snake
She asks the same questions that he has asked himself over the years. The same thing that he has stared into unmoving waters and questioned. Why is he so angry? Why is he so bitter? He has answers—he has been alive and there is no shortage of things to make him miserable—but were they truly so bad? Did he truly have a reason to be this furious at the world? He has no answer. Nothing sensical to answer. He was born happy (he thinks, he can hardly remember) but every inconvenience has been something to further prove to him that this world does not deserve his humor, his joy, his heart. He does not deserve it either.
Staring at her now only reminds him of that fact and he wonders if that is why his chest hurts. Why every breath feels like a struggle, a vice grip around his lungs. He snorts and clenches his teeth but does not leave her—does not step away. He just stands, carved from granite, and watches summer dance over her.
“Our interactions have always been so pleasant,” he replies, and if he were more skilled, perhaps he would have interjected it with enough levity to make it believable, but he cannot. So the words fall leaden off his tongue instead and he’s left standing, awkward and furious as always. Her next question though causes his eyes to snap up and the storms to crackle to life in his grey eyes. He feels it brewing in his chest, threatening to unleash in him, like a leather strap ready to break under the smallest pressure.
He stares at her hard and takes the smallest step forward, a shift in his posture so that he’s leaning into her heat as if trying to get burned. “Why do you always ask the more infuriating questions?” he snarls and his eyes are over bright, his mouth pulled too tight, his brow furrowed. “Maybe I’m just angry because you’re around,” he snaps, all decorum and hope for a pleasant interaction draining from him. He ignores the way his pulse thrashes and his mind snarls around itself—ignores how the question echoes in him.
(Why? Why? Why?)
Instead he focuses on the feeling in his chest that expands further and further, draining through him. He focuses on the way it expands like a storm building and he swallows it down.
shook like some old souls when our bones broke
swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
@Brinly