‣ 𝚆𝙷𝙰𝚃 𝙳𝙾 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝚂𝚃𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝙵𝙾𝚁, @shieldedsoldier ?
twilight feels like another cremation. ashes that seep into his flesh, infused marrow-deep he doesn’t know how to differentiate the burnt from the sum. alternatively, it’s a zero. nothingness that imbibes on his ichor. he doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t inquire. not anymore. used to wake up every morning with the weight of syllables clamouring his mind. kings don’t ask. kings don’t weep. there’s no room for weakness. he’s been so used to this, swallowing the pills that swell like lumps in his throat. maintains the lies. maintains the smiles.
it’s only when the robes fall, when the curtains close — it’s only then that he remembers how to breathe ( feels like the exit from the ancestral plane all over again, or this, the escape from the atrophies of death ). not even shuri can heal the mementos that mark his every mind chamber with tallies, knowing fully well that she’s also one that needs healing. they’re all suffering. one way or another… does it matter? kings don’t cry. kings don’t weep. he doesn’t tell her, doesn’t tell anyone that in his sleep, he always sees baba’s death all over again. all this numb, the senseless state of being as he wakes up heaving.
and there’s this, the whole falsity about how love cures. there’s no cure for the wounds that keep gushing, waterfall as he excavates himself from the halved consciousness that reminds him of the freefall. to a coma. the only difference is that now he has someone else to witness him as he breaks out of another fitful sleep. when it’s not steve, it’s him. interchangeable. irreplaceable. there’s something about the way they rest that doesn’t coexist with the traumas that they’ve exchanged their lives with. they escaped too many deaths, but at what cost?
again, as the crepuscular lights slither into the skyscraper, into the bedroom that he’s come to know as a rest from the play pretend, he hoists himself to a sitting position, writhing into the layer of duvets as he curls into himself. sweats run down his spine, trickling down in the beat of arrhythmia. he sinks deeper as he tries schooling his breathing, trying to find a grip in himself as the echoes of nostalgia preventing him from inhaling, exhaling. there’s a noose around his neck that never really loosens itself. now it’s tightening, suffocating. he doesn’t dare look at his company, not in this state. there’s internalized shame that brims his edges, and he wants to be alone. but he’s not, he’s not.
blakekathryn
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