Tonight, a story. A story of eyes, lips, and hands. A story of a girl digging for something to fix. Whether it's her or the thing she fixes doesn't quite matter anymore. It's a story of a girl searching for something that doesn't quite exist anymore.
The girl, as we will call her because her name does not, has not, and will not matter, has sand shifting and falling in her eyes. Time runs like an hourglass there, and her eyes are soft with age, despite her youth. Eyes that see, that want to be seen. The girl can't quite remember when her eyes filled with sand, and she can't remember when the sand started to slide inevitably down to the bottom of the hourglass. Her eyes tell her all the stories she never wanted to know, and in her mirror they scream that her time is running fast. She cries, and the sand runs down her cheeks, running the same lines they have for years. Slowly, slowly, they have begun to feel like permanent marks on her skin. Sometimes it burns with memories from another her, one she didn't know anymore. They run with those dreams and hopes, and sometimes the girl tries to catch the sand in her hands. No amount of grasping, catching, or seeing could stop that sand though, and her attempts were wasted, like sand through a sieve. Caught for a moment, and falling through the next.
Fear has no place in her mind, and as the hourglass runs, steady, steady, she waits. She doesn't know for what, but she waits and weeps as fate flows past, unfeeling and uncaring. An ocean, and each tide causing the one that hit the shore before, each action pushing the next further. The girl wished that the ocean would lap up the sand and take it on it's own journey so her reflection wouldn't hurt her so much, but her time and fate are not on the same journey, so her eyes will continue to burn and ache with every grain that passes through the waist of the hourglass.
The girl's hands had long been digging for something she had some time ago. Finding their purpose in catching the running sand from her eyes and digging through the mud of the life she never asked for, yet claimed anyway. What is it she is searching for? She herself does not know, she only knows what the sand in her eyes had given her so long ago. The old her was in that sand, a smile so bright and wide that it lit up a room, and a heart so pure and brave that she could grasp the hand of a stranger and make them a friend. What had she lost? She couldn't remember. Her hands kept grasping, slipping clumsily, digging deep, only for the wet chill of mud to flow back and refill the hole she had worked so hard to clear. There was something that was supposed to be here. What was it? A hole so deep from a missing smile? It's not enough. She digs and digs and digs, so deep that her hands plead for mercy, that her bones ache with every move. Every drop of sand that runs down her cheeks mixes with the mud, and it grows with a ferocity like no other. It grows like it craves. It hungers for revenge, or kindness, or maybe just peace. It doesn't matter. She lost something here. That smile from her lips, she had to dig, so whatever that smile gave her could go back where it was supposed to go. From her lips, lips,
Her lips. There had been so much to say back then. Her mouth had been so full of words and ideas. She had been so full. What had she lost? Her eyes ran, her hands dug, but her mouth. What had she lost? Her mouth was so quiet now. Dry, downturned, cracked. It draws quick panicked breaths- Where had she lost it? It begs, and pleads with the air, with the sand, with the mud, with the digging, it begs, but for what?
"Ple- ase. Please."
She didn't know. The girl didn't know. So she kept digging, eyes leaking and mouth pleading. She dug for a truth. A truth she had lost long ago. A truth that was taken from her. Wrenched from her hands, from her eyes, from her mouth, and from her lips, lips, from her lips.
