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Close your eyes.
A friend is standing too close for you to focus on. His hands patting your face, his forehead against yours, his words ringing in your ears. Be strong, be steady, you know you are better than this.
Stay and talk to me, don't leave me with a blurry ghost I can barely make out, pull me in and keep me within the length of your arm, hold me there until I know how to go. Lie to my face, cover your words in silver, while I'm standing alone in this room, pretending to be a person.
Imagine my legs straight, my hair combed, the shine of my eyes in this crimson light. Imagine my face cold, my teeth chattering, the shake of my fingers pressing against my cloak. I'm thinking, ‘my face, their eyes, the floor that never seems to sleep.’ I'm thinking, ‘this is where I live, this is what I do, this is who I am.’
When we were little we used to think we were invincible. We made houses out of cushions, we made worlds out of cardboard boxes, and we made stories out of our own budding life. We could do anything. We could reach anything. It's not because our future was bright, it's not — look where we are — it's what we struggled with.
The words are dead on our tongue, the promises we never got to keep, the possibilities we never tried to explore. The attempt to say: Come home, we are still a family, we are still friends, we have forgiven, we have forgotten.
You'll celebrate my life and I'll celebrate yours too, and one day I will come to love us for how we really are, I will come over and I will bring our friends and I will learn to love whatever they throw our way.
My dear, my firefly, my whispering forest, and the river that rushes through it, you can defend yourself, there are knives in the kitchen. My friend, my ticking bomb, my white-capped mountain, and the clouds that cut atop the peak, you can step outside, there are always knives in the kitchen. My brother, my outlaw, my circled clearing, and the blades glinting from the piles, there is no need to be afraid, the knives in the kitchen are singing for blood.
But we are the cut paths, we are the decision, we are at our own intersection, my dear little sinner, and there is no map to our destination. There is only the map we conjure out of our own tattered heart. The broken map, the broken paper, the broken people gathered around in a huddled group trying to decipher what it says.
A mountain! A forest! A river! A lake!
A person! Another one! A circle where the mass meets the epicentre!
A bloodbath! A massacre! An earthquake that comes where the friend lays beneath the grass!
This is not a map. This is the second coming, the second try, the second coin inserted into the machine, the second chance you have at playing the game. The double-take, the hooded eyes, the slap on my face telling me to look up! There is a picture ahead of you.
The landscape, the portrait, the horizon before our own cruel journey. Which is, of course, the hallway outside my door. Which is the tenderness in the first step towards the world. Which is the bravery you need to face their eyes. Which is a friend — can you remember her nimble fingers? — that comes tap-tapping into your head: hold me tight, it's getting colder, I want you to remember, I want you to take me as your own memory and I want to live forever in your head.
Which is the one promise you should have never kept.
We have not reached the end, no, we are still quite far from it. We have not saved the princess from the tower, we have not played the last lingering note, and we still have only taken the first step beyond our safe haven.
This is not a hero's journey, this is a redemption arc.
We are not forgiven, we are not forgotten, we are the spotlight that shines down on the things that haunt our nights.
We want to take the next step, and the next, and the next, and every other step we need to take to get us to the other side, which brings us back to the friends we can never really call our friends. The liar, the soldier, the angel, the spark, the star, the beast. Their hero's head, their villain's feet, their heavy shoulders, and the gentleness that comes not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.
The door opened, the people turned, the white light falling down upon my crown. The echoed steps, the gnawing silence, the smiling prince, the smiling king, the smiling hurt. The golden card, the faceless mass, the child's voice bouncing around the room, waiting to be punctured, waiting to be struck, waiting to be guided back home, and instead all it can do is smile and revel in the thunder that comes afterward.
I'll give you my word if you're willing to take it, evidence of a trust neither of us can afford to show. I'll give you my heart if that's what you want, all you need to do is look inside my chest and find it; I don't know how to pinpoint the pulse. I'll give you my life and we'll make a place to make it happen.
Isn't this what we always wanted? No. It's what you wanted, and I was your tag-along. How could I have left you alone to your own journey, darling, we were stuck together since the very beginning.
My broken self, my other half, my fractured mirror, we have a long way to go. Your time is up, bow down and let the light catch your head. The spotlight blinks, the audience cheers, and it is time to relent the stage to another. You stand at the other side of my coin, ready to fall, and yet you don’t realise that we are not done.
Sit down. Look up. Bare your teeth. Smile and rip out someone's throat, at this point they're one and the same. Listen to your ‘friends’ and answer their questions.
How will you fit in here?
Will we get to know you?
Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?
Lie back. Your time is up. You have not felt grass in days, you don't have to run.
Is that too much to expect? That I would let you rest? That I would stand and I would answer their questions when your voice dies in our throat?
The stars are named after us, my red-eyed shadow, and one day I will take you there.
We've read the back of the book, we know what's going to happen to us, we have prepared for the pitfall and we have tied ourselves to a tree. As the narrative dips below the ground, I’ll fall, and you'll catch me. And when the story rises to its peak, I’ll climb, and you'll watch my back.
The fox ran, the room broken, and the friends are left standing with blinding grins in this pristine hall. We've come so far from the sword in the broken dirt.
It’s gone. It’s been gone for quite a long time. Makes you sad, doesn’t it? To know that all our past is forgotten.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
No more tears. No more laughter.
I would like to meet you all in Heaven, as I would like to see you down in Hell. I would like to look at all of you who are left alive and reeling from the bloody rapture.
Turn your head. Someone is talking. Look them in the eye and smile at what they have to say. Nevermind their plastic face and their neon skin. Nevermind the brash words they spew out of their sickly mouth. Nevermind their hands sweeping over your cheek in a careless pat.
Oh dear.
I see Hell in your pupils. I see the bloodbath you stood in the middle of. We cannot escape this, no. We were forged from the red that spilled onto the morning grass. Do you remember? Do we remember? Blood flows strangely in water, and our hands are no longer dirty.
There's a litany of words winding around our head. We're standing somewhere in the middle, standing still, standing strong; we cannot afford to stumble into the walls we’ve built. A litany of dreams waiting for us to close our eyes. A litany of people, faceless, voiceless, their identities as solid in our mind as ours is. A litany, and by God we are the petitioner, we are the clergy, we are the priest, and we are the false idol.
How long have we been doing this? How long do we have to go?
Moonlight spilling onto the ballroom floor. A page of the torn golden book in our clawed fingers where we once wrote the story of our life. The great story, the grand saga, the golden stage where we have confined ourselves. We wanted to slam open the doors to the throne room and stride in to usurp the emperor, and when he gave us his crown willingly, we didn't look past the glitter to see the bars of the cage descending around us.
Our feet are bleeding and we’ll never scrub the red stain off the ground.
Moonlight making crosses on our chest, and me putting my fist over every one to cover my heart. We have been very brave, too brave, and we have wanted the best for us, which is why we gave them their worst. All I can do now is strike this apology against my ribcage and hope that the people not watching can understand how much we wanted them to see.
Let the curtain lift from our eyes. Look outside and let it fall back. We are not ready, and maybe that is our worst mistake. Out there is a nightmare we have yet to dive into and here, safe and familiar, is the dream going on with all of us in it.
Our father who art in Heaven. Our father who art buried in the yard. Our father who art miles away back home and begging for his son back.
The dream, our flowing cape, our cold lips, our feet shaking in our boots.
Someone is digging your grave right now. Someone is arranging flowers by the soil. Someone is carving your headstone: Here lies the bloody hero, may God not rest their soul.
The dream, their cruel satisfaction, their forked tongue, their ignorant rhetoric.
So think of the wind, think of the outside, think of your distant home and the calling of your old attic, so happy, so warm. You are so far, I am so far, but only one of us wants to go back. You can turn away from your grave now, but you cannot ignore me when I tell you that one day we will have to lie in it.
They are spinning a fable wherein we are the morals. We are the crow with the cheese. We are the villagers who heard the boy crying wolf. We are the golden goose at the end of the greedy day. This is the story beneath the story, the untold tales of the big bad sliding down the polished castle hallways with the freedom of the lightning striking outside the shuttered windows, once here and now gone.
We stand atop the pedestal they've built for us and proclaim ourselves the false idol so we can hope that they prolong their generosity, that they pray to us and not what we've stuffed behind our backs. But what happens when they climb up the ladder and force us to turn? Do we simply stare at what's horrible and hope that we can forgive ourselves?
Here is the lock, and here is the box, and here are the memories I cannot bear to face. Here is the sword, and here is the sheath, and here are the moments you must learn to stop at. Here are the people, here are the questions, and here is the desire to run away, so that one day we won’t freeze at the thought of answering the question behind every question: What happens next?
The way we grit our teeth and smile back at them reminds me that I'm still alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling, and we are staring down the deep, dark jaws of their deceit. They're always a few steps behind us, a few steps ahead of us, finding the flaw, the chinks in our armour. The places where our cloak can't cover our skin, the places they can rip into so easily if we weren't trying to keep them out, to slam up the mask and keep them here on the plastic side of the stage where the curtains fight to rise.
We sidestepped the mass and tried to run away from the crowd. I have to make up the words by myself, the way they taste bittersweet, the way they sound like a scrape on the porcelain, and you have to fend their eyes off on your own, the way they can't blink, the way they won't look away from our tender moments. I passed through the people, stumbled out, stumbled around for a while, stumbled into a friend I cannot call my friend, and stumbled back in.
He made this place for us. A place for you to let your sword down. A place for me to rest. If this isn't a kingdom then I don't know what is.
So how do you see it?
Light brought down from the spotlights we're supposed to love?
The people we are taught to adore and the people we are forced to resent?
A dawn of the new day that neither of us can face because neither of us are worthy?
I was trying to describe the kingdom so you can see what I saw, but the words keep spilling together as I speak them: the hunter's eyes, the hunter's cloak, the hunter's crown, the trees and the trees and the hunter walking beneath the trees, choking on silver-plated mercury.
Hindsight. The trees were frozen. The hunter was frozen. The words and the creatures and the friends, all gone, all there, all spinning, all wild. A hand on our shoulder that pulled us back from the rabid clouds and back into our shaking boots. Losing it will get us nowhere, so wipe your future tears off your golden cheeks and follow the friends' lead.
Smile.
The liar is talking.
The liar is gripping our shoulder so tightly that it hurts. The liar is telling us, through words that are not words, that he is with us. Ask me if I trust him, and you very well know my answer, but he is all we have in this spinning world that we now live in. The liar, who calls in the soldier, who calls in the angel, who calls in the spark, who calls in the star, who calls in the beast, who calls in-
I was away, I don't know where, I don’t know when. Maybe I was back in the bloody field or maybe I am here, now, standing in the cold ballroom alone, pretending to be a person. I look around and I can tell that all the wrong people love us and that all the right people hate us. The friends we cannot call our friends wish I was pretending to be dead, instead of masquerading this porcelain person.
Stand down, at ease, there is nothing for you to break. There is nothing for you to hurt, there is nothing for you to hunt. Turn that anger elsewhere, turn that anger inward, scream about how unfair of a situation we've dug ourselves into, when you very well know you dragged me into this.
I was your tag-along, and it is only now that I wished I never followed.
I wanted to hurt you. I still do, dear. But mutually-assured self destruction will get us nowhere. I will earn my victory, but I will never learn to stomach it. ‘We have swallowed him up,’ they said to me, about me, when they made you out of my stricken ambitions. ‘It's beautiful. It really is. We made him beautiful. He really is.’
I had a dream about you the other night, when we were running awake and delirious under the fabric sky.
In the dream, we were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want, and you said, ‘Tell me about the end, what do you see?’ and I said, ‘This is the future, these are my books, and those are the nightmares waiting to consume us. We are the same person, me and you, silver and blood, pen and sword, the Moon and the Sun, and this is our eclipse, but one day we'll break away.’
You asked me, ‘Tell me about your reality.’ and I said, ‘There is none. There is no reality for my plaited words, there is no reality for my soft voice, and there is no reality for my heart stuck back in our old attic. There is no reality for me, but one day, I'll find my future as nonexistence. One day I'll look around myself and I will be alone.’
You asked me, ‘Tell me about my future.’ and I said, ‘There is none. There is no future for your glinting blade, there is no future for your blind trust, and there is no future for your heart stuck out in some impossible dream. There is no future for you, but one day, you'll find your reality as the past. One day you'll look around yourself and you will be alone.’
Darling, we are the same person, we are the tragic tale of the two starving wolves and the question of which . We will tear each other apart, and then they will tear the survivor apart, and then there will be nothing left for either the reality or the future. One of us has to go, and therein lies the choice.
Unwrap your arms from around my neck and let go of my fingers. Turn around and lift your chin. Face me, face the crowd, face the friends.
We are the crossroads, my trembling twin, and this is the moment that decides.
Now here we are, and we are back in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want, and I ask you, ‘What do you want, sweetheart?’ and you tell me, ‘I want to live.’
So here we are. Neither of us are ready for what comes next.
Here you are with your legs straight and your bleeding sword pulled out of the sheath. Here you are, with your red eyes drenched in blue, your blind trust in them wavering when you need it the most.
(Here you are in the gold room where you realise you never wanted this.)
Here I am on my knees and my head tilted back so I can look at the sky and remember the stars named after us. Here I am, with my red eyes closed, blinding my own trust for the first time and offering it to you.
(Here I am in the gold room where I'm giving it to you anyway.)
The conversation is over. The doors are closing. And yet we cannot move from our spot on the pedestal. I am singing now while the kingdom burns. We are all just trying to repent.
My dear Icarus, just get it over with.
We are all moving forward, none of us are going back. Godspeed, brother.
Open your eyes.