@consilian ; another factor in his self-deceit.
In a sense, the day always started with a cracked sky that spills spectrum and speaks in blood.
The boy that holds the end of clockwork between his teeth spends his dates in reverse, veins counting seconds of beginning when the sun reflects the streets like a one-sided mirror. The shell of hours haunts him when morning creeps and sleep plants itself in his viscera. Boned dreams and sculpted nightmares, always doused in the ocean of lights: if the ultraviolet becomes his formaldehyde, why do bedtime stories teach him to fear the monsters cultivating in darkness?
Tales of dawn reprise the memories of a caged animal: skin tessellated with oxblood and tongue lacquered in silence. There is a man with palms welted by violence and a boy with chipped teeth and broken limbs. There is something about (unintended) murder in a room where a flatline echoes. He wants to forget.
( He forgets during the night. )
His surrogate synthesis comes in the break of the upturned circadian cycle. He cleanses himself of silvery smudges that define his insomnia. Meanders his way through the scattered pieces of frantic purging and soothed musing. Puts his tattered shoes on, he is soaked in secondhand innocence and leathery discomfort.
Three hours to his shift but the room shrinks and claustrophobia smothers. Destination always comes after the walk, all lost feet against the estuary of the time riverbed.
Today the sun falls in streaks of melodic colors, enunciated in the shade of concave fire. He scribbles a photograph of the skyscape via a tired mind. He forgets what he wants to remember and remembers what he wants to forget. By the end of the halved axis, this scene will rest as a dollop of blurred paint in his head.
This is a drown without a poetic finish, but he reminds himself that at least he is not anchored to the sea floor. A little note to self: the scars are no longer wounds. He is in a city that offers this diaphanous promise of safety. Not enough, but enough to deceive himself.
This, after all, is a tyranny of lies.
When idleness is scissored by the sight of familiarity, however, he’d like to think of honesty. Bonds, connections. He’d like to deceive himself and believe that they are honest. Hyemi is honest. (And so is he.)
He waves at her to attract her attention, reeking of self-doubts and social anxiety. He calls for her name, three quarter of the volume caught in his throat but he hopes that she will hear him anyway. Closes the gap, curls a smile. It’s stiff, but it will do. “Hyemi,” he tries again, maybe louder. “Hello.”
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