Seventeen

𝖝. and it makes her laugh at

'I've been playing dead my whole life' was something she had said to her Mother at thirteen. The words had passed through Catherine like clouds licking the underside of your skin. She had told Solaris off instead of holding her close the same way she did with Flora and Isabella. Solaris had asked herself if there was anything before this sadness— she could no longer remember the taste of her favourite childhood candy— she could barely remember anything at all. There was no soul before that body. There was no soil before these plants. All at once, they were all dying.

She had many thoughts living in her mind, always wondering if she had taken the blame for everything she hadn't done then maybe it wouldn't have turned out the way it did for her. She had always asked herself: 'if I dug up the earth laying beneath their feet, would I be the person I used to be? Or the person I've always wanted to be?'

There had been so many foreign hands grasping at her skin, mourning mornings, monsters leading her home, leaving but only leaving in pieces, but nothing simple. Not simple hands, mornings, home, staying— there was never much for her here— so she had always planned on leaving. But where do you go where there's nowhere to go?

It's like salt in the wound. That's all she'd ever known and she was not sure she'd ever know anything else. Her heart was splitting with splinters licking at its seams and breaking with the dagger resting in its centre. Everything felt this way. There was no hope left to tuck into a jar glass.

'To myself,

This journal is filled to the brim with the eulogies I make for myself and for everyone mourning me. It won't be long now.

               I know there's no safe place for me—not one that I know of, anyway— I have carried angels on my wingless back, I have brought war back to those who've deceived me, I have gained the devil's devotion: I can never stay at one place because when people find the you— the one I hide— I'm afraid they'll leave. Just like Mommy, Mama, Daddy, Elias, Brianna, Cece: I remember them all. I remember them from the pitter patter of their feet against oak wood floors, I can see every freckle that trails down the side of their faces and I am so afraid of everyone leaving that I'm the one who chooses to leave.

           I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to leave me. Instead, I open the door and tell anyone who's ever chosen to leave: See? I knew you'd walk away.

        Everyone has empty fucking promises altered to its cusp, fitting but never enough. Just like me.

               Never enough.

         - Solaris Blanche, December 6, 1994.
            new diary entry, passage #1.'

'To Hermione:

The first time I heard my name plastered against your tongue, it rolled into my ear like an easy harmony. The ground felt like my mother-tongue, a language full of soliloquies that swallows me whole and feels like home on my larynx again. Every time you mention my name, it feels like gravity is cut from where it's grounded and i'm flying into walls that let me swim through them like water. You make physics lose at the sound of my name on your mouth.

- Solaris Blanche, December 8, 1994,
new diary entry, passage #2.'

                 'To Elias,

                 I think you were the first boy I've ever loved. I was sleep-walking on your sea of uncertainty but I was still in a slumber when I drowned. You're paler than milk teeth, standing at six-foot-one at fourteen, your eyes changed its hue from honey brown to green lakes when a shed of light was presented to it but you? You were cloud-grey and your love felt the same way.

You'd tell me you loved me only to take it back right when I had spun and swam in your scarlet-disguised romance. You loved parables and you'd paint crosses on the base of your fingers, 'holy', you'd tell me and I'd tell you that you were anything but. You were anything but, yet you were everything to me.

We would never have worked, but still, I wanted skin, teeth and every shed of heartache we'd lay out if we decided to speak. You left, after everything and I guess it's safe to say that even the one constant home I had was moving blocks away and silent spaces is the only thing left we have between us.

This was how you left:

The bed was the aftermath of a night terror, the porch lights were still flickering from bright to nothing, the house was so silent you can hear the quietness ringing in your ears. The television was still playing when you chose to leave.

How I wanted you to leave:

Like you never left.

- Solaris Blanche, December 12, 1994.
                    new diary entry, passage #3.'

'To Hermione,

I think I love you but I'm so scared. I have never loved someone, I've always been afraid to. People have called me toxic, bitter, sharp— anything poisonous, not good— for years, I have been shot at with words molded into bullets and I never dodged them, I would just act like they didn't hit me and they did. I once smoked with my friend, Santana Malarkey on the balcony of our hotel bedroom. She asked me what it felt like to hate happiness, up to this day I couldn't think of an answer. Which was rare for me. I always have the answer. I always know what's right, correct, but for once, I was rendered speechless and I couldn't tell her what it felt like. It feels like your heart is a hallow void that beats against your ribs. It feels like your mind is the aftermath of a tsunami of almosts. She asked me why I couldn't try to be happy. I guess I was scared of getting better. I don't know who I am without being sick. I'll be nothing, no one. I'd rather stick around and be ill but aching rather than someone who doesn't know theirself.

- Solaris Blanche, December 21, 1994.
                    new diary entry, passage #4.'