Seventeen

𝖛𝖎𝖎. and feels like a lover

         Do you die before you break?

Solaris had really grown to like Hermione. She was painted in every corner of her mind, in the back of her eyelids and no matter how much she'd try to shut her out, she's in the background and there's no getting rid of her. She knew it. Hermione was her favourite. Hermione crawled into her brain and kissed every crevice with her witty smile and her lovely stares. Her laughter became the main track tuning in on Solaris' head. Through the nightly cellophane, her gaze lasered through the tinted windows— green eyes wide open, her shoulder blades were slightly raised while the  pills travel to the pit of her stomach and there was nothing she can do but grin in the midnight moon. Solaris' dreams were never sequels of her slumber, but always parodies that revelled in horror, never kind clarities, always nightmares springing to life in paper. She wished she could dream like Hermione, unvisited lakes sheeted with gossamer isles and emerald ice whilst she pocketed eskimo in the brim of the waters— her dreams were anything but lucid, unreal and rooting from fantasies she's carved into his brain. Solaris' dreams were too real to not be feared of.

          Sharp glass cutting through her chest, pleading please, Papa while he holds her close to him, but the shard even closer. Blame it on her cynicism, or the unseen realities bouncing off the marble walls of her castle but her dreams were awfully vivid and shivering in her wake. Solaris' coral mouth, bronze hair is in a midsummer daydream: her eyes are sharpening blades, teeth ground to pistol dust.

        (this i confess under torture)

         The curve of her back showed the batter shines of the ivory white glaze, the moonlight caresses her skin and poignant chaos brews in her chest with the swelling of drowning dreams.

          'Are you alright?' Heart aching, eyes bleeding, mouth bending and chest sore—I'm fine!— the ghosts of her self-hatred building up against the fabric of her wrists and she sighed. Solaris was never fine, but if you ever caught her saying she wasn't—it would probably be the last thing you saw. Her rain is poison and anyone dancing in her storm aches, skin burning like holy water against the skin of hungry demons. The dawn was beneath the bed of her nails, Solaris' power was loud enough to bruise ears and rattle its drums to her mind shaking.

            (fine fine fine fine fine fine fine)

            'Solaris, be strong!' Velveteen voice coating the trail of her larynx, posture regained in a snap of her mother's fingers, shoulders clasping and smile stitching on her mouth— blood on her father's hands and Solaris shuddered behind her mask, shaking hands with people with her mother's nails digging into her back

          (smile solaris stand still solaris)

          and there was no alternative. Sit still, Sol. Smile tight, Sol. No sighs, Sol. Stand straight, Sol.

          'Solaris, smile. Smile harder.' Mouth bitten down, blood tucked beneath her tongue— practised smiles and sore throats, pursed lips and furrowed brows; when will it be enough? Bleeding smiles weren't half as good for her parents, flashing cameras caught each lapse of her frown in between the tightly knit grins. Her smile written on every article, try–hard, beautiful, helpless, hopeful, trapped: fine.

She had never met anyone quite like Hermione. Kind eyes, small smile— a flower unraveling in the midst of spring, it was comforting, it was almost an anchor she'd wish to hold onto before getting dragged off the shore— but that was almost and she still wished to drown.

           There she was, on her knees beside the painting Hermione had clawed her out of. Eyes shut, chest heaving, crying. This was the first time she'd felt like there was a tiny piece of hope, a small muffled light trying to break its way through to her. Hermione. But she wanted to save Hermione, and the only way to save her was to disappear. She'd choose to spend her whole lifetime in the painting if it meant saving Hermione. So she tried it. Hand going through the painting like her hand going into water, it didn't feel tangible, but it was. So she tried it. She tried to put her leg into the painting, but to her surprise, the canvas broke. She gasped.

            "No, no, no, no!"

            "Solaris?"