ALONE | where our hearts sink into the earth.
― I don't want to be alone anymore.
The world had not been kind to us, the boy and the girl, and the souls within.
Made to suffer, minds that were created for this world, they do not sink; they swim.
but...
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TESS
It was a difficult thing to understand. My mind and every thought that dripped from it, the matter of it all, what made up my tissues, what made up myself. It had all changed in the passing years. The girl that once walked into the world as a free soul was now shackled down by the guilt that caressed her. An etching reminding that the blood coating her hands would always remain, no matter the flood given to wash it away.
In a way or two, I was still the girl, but a different breed the earth had carved me out to be. Sculpted by hands that never loved me, I was forced to watch myself shift over long months until I became unrecognizable. Deep down, under the doughy flesh, the little girl I once was still lingered. It would take many years to dig her back out again. What I wouldn't do to see that innocence one more time.
Exhaustion was the only thing my body knew by the time I found myself back within the prison walls. It was spread out unevenly along me, my feet dragging heavily, but my hands were as light as feathers. My fingers stayed busy at bending at one another, a nervous habit I hadn't been able to break yet. There was a simple thought pricking at the back of my mind, one that reminded me of the soft bed that awaited me, a place that would allow me to rest for a moment.
As I stood on free ground without an ounce expected from me, I still found parts of myself screeching out in silence, a cloak of undeserving ways finding me. It was difficult to believe I deserved all that had been given to me. A bed for myself, a belly full of food, kind souls that offered me anything other than sorrow. What had I done to deserve any of it?
You survived, Tess.
Two boys surrounded me, the same I had been handed off to earlier in the afternoon. Patrick followed me so closely, there were times his steps snapped at the back of my boots. Carl Grimes, the boy who led me into the prison, now led Patrick and I through the walls. I was uncomfortable between the two, tired of following, aggravated from the pull at my heels, overwhelmed by the day in total, but there was little I could do.
The sky was the very last sight I took in before the darkness swept me away. A bath of swaying colors burning down into the horizon, rusted orange and sunflower yellow tracing what was left of the clouds. It was a sight I would not watch dissolve away completely for once. I'd watched every single sunset for months. It was another part of the change I would have to grow comfortable with.
The sunsets and what made them up were never the same; you never caught the same sunset twice, much like snowflakes.
"You know, you're pretty lucky to be set up in Cell Block C." Carl suddenly spoke up, voice echoing back harshly from the tight walls that surrounded us. Once the courtyard door had shut behind us, the chilled ways of the concrete walls absorbed every ounce of heat that once swam along my skin.
