Beautiful Thorns/a promise of deep blue (final title tbd)

a promise of deep blue: (rewrite/edits 2022)

ACTUAlLY there's a second part now! enjoy? 

My eyelids drift down softly. There's comfort in closing my eyes. Despite knowing they always open again. At least when my eyes are closed, I'm not blinded.

I can see better when the rest of the world floats away.

Reluctantly, it comes back. The blinding lights, the bird, the void. His shallow voice continues. His figure remains motionless, a statue made of shadows and light.

dimensions.

free-fall,

slipping,

grasping,

letting 

go.

the mumbles continue on in the darkness, inaudibly, suffocated by the walls of light.

I close my eyes again, seeking whatever relief I can. 

My eyes are heavy. Limp. Exhausted. I am not home. 

The glow burns brightly but no longer hurts. Have I grown numb? Accustomed? It all burns. 

A small, blurry puddle sparkles in the light, a crystal blue through the pavement. A rat sprints by, missing tufts of fur, clearly desperate for salvation. He disappears, rushing through the water without making a single sound. I stumble forward towards the water, desperate for something to drink. Crawling over, I cup my hands weakly and dip them in the puddle. 

It's dry.

I'm dizzy. My head is spinning. I can't see straight.

Yet this one thing is clear.

I look up, dropping my hands from their cupped position, where the blinding lights hadn't yet reached. Beautiful vines wrap themselves around every structure they can cling onto, grand clocks, bars of gold, record players, graves. I can make out small dots of deep blue. Not everything here had given up. I reach out and stagger towards a low hanging vine. Even though the air is musty, and the ground is littered with garbage, and the streets are abandoned, and rats skitter around, and the sky is blinding, and I've given up, it pulls me.

The light in the dark.

The only thing alive.

 The petals are silky, soft, velvet. I almost don't notice the little thorns decorating the edge of the stalk. I let them pierce my hand. They sting a little, but I focus on the delicate petals between my finger tips. 

It's a spell. 

Blood rushes through my veins. All I want is to collapse. To finally doze off the way I did before, to escape.

To never have to worry about what you see once you open your eyes.

I slowly walk through the rows of graves. No cobwebs. Only vines, crawling up to the headstones, blossoming as a reminder of life. I'm supposed to feel something. 

I read the names on the headstones.

That's all they are.

Names and a stone to acknowledge that once, someone was alive.

I stop. My name. There is no shock. No regret. No fear. Just promise. I read my name over a few times. I take note of how dead I am. How real the gravestone is. How easy it is. How simple it is. Here, I am dead. 

Thousands of blossoms cover my headstone, only mine. Royal blues hide the crumbling stone beneath. 

So this was what I'd become.

I want to see my body. I want to see my crumbling, disintegrated, brittle, dead body.

I would extend my hand towards the other limp hand beside me, brushing off some dust. It would feel heavy, and if I squeezed it hard enough it would crumble. I'd rest my head on my own weak shoulder, the way you should've done before. And this time, I would realize that it wouldn't be blindness that would kill me. I would realize that the most beautiful, precious, alive thing can only survive if it kills. I would notice the thorns in my dead finger, and I would scream, because no, I don't want to die, and no, this isn't the end.

Instead, I can only sigh in relief.

One

last

promise.