Prompt: Write something inspired by a song you hate,
Date: 6/29/2015
By: Elise
You spent your days walking in this empty house, the old wallpaper peeling away, and you knew you could’ve had my hand to hold but you didn’t. The brushed side by side, but never intertwined. And the stairs were always trying to speak to me while you were asleep and I’d have to tell you not to yell. Do you remember? I’d say you would tear a hole in the walls, the walls that we knew for so long, they might as well be everything we ever used to know. And then you’d say that you couldn’t care any less, you’d tear everything down, this life you’ve always known, this life just wasn’t right for you. And I’d always tell you that I’d build a place for us, I’d build up an army, I’d fabricate a world, just for the sake of keeping you happy, to save our little plastic hearts from melting in the sun. But I’ve always known that that would never work. I could roll the dice forever, and I’d still have to ask God to save whatever we’ve got left, whatever we’ve got left in that box in our chest.
And when I took back the pieces of what was left in that box, I had done it. I built the house. And fabricated a world. You couldn’t believe it. The stairs didn’t speak, there were no hills in the carpet, you could scream without doing the walls any damage. You traipsed around this place I had created, surrounded by my cellophane soldiers. This was it. The place you’ve been dying to be, your dreamworld.
But that was the problem. This was only a dreamworld. It was only smoke and cheap origami. And I wish I could have kept you asleep, never to wake up to the sounds of speaking stairs, but we both know that the knotted ties to our waking lives are far to complicated to untie.
And so the world collapsed. It was a ship doomed to sink and all we would be left with are remnants of whatever pieces we had leftover in the boxes in our chests. I could have told you. I should have told you. But how could I find the words? The tear in our hearts where tearing and we didn’t have anywhere to run anymore. We started knowing the walls like the back of our hands and we could never get the stairs to stop speaking to me. We needed to get away. We needed our walls, stairs, hands, hair — hell, even the moon — to stop being paper. You know it. The life we had known, the walls and the pieces in our empty boxes in our chests, they’re not right, not for us. We needed something of our own. And you know I’d do anything to be alive with more than a breath so I could speak more than a word, and I could tell you that despite this paper world and paper walls and paper moon, we’re still alive enough to despise something together.