Warning; Scales is a body-horror serial and, at times, terrible terrain for the mind. Please mind your head, and arms, and legs.
In his face he was brooding and penseive. Far away, even when he looked at you. Until he really looked at you. Henley’s were made for his shoulders. The buttons laid ajar, just so, enough to see a healed collar bone from a bygone accident.
There are mountains in the sands where he pretends to live. As if the shoreline has less depth than the oceans it borders. He was beautiful. He was mine. And then, he was gone.
The streetlight rule was real. I always got a text just as dusk descended:
‘you’re cutting it close…’
Ominous to some, but we understood what it meant. The playful jest of violent intervention at the thought of having to wait any longer to meet again.
I take in another breath and the memory is ripped away by the reality before me.
The evening had started to creep in and it was starting again. The ache, the mourning, the crying out for relief. My skin crackles against a sweat-soaked shirt, each tiny fissure of dried scale catching on the fabric. Sitting on the edge of a bog begging it to have mercy at what feels as the edge of the world. Bodies of water reforming and changing the ground, digesting and vomiting the remains into new plateaus or staggeringly entrenched lows. Rarely do they climb, that is left to the vines.
But there was no text today, and dusk had certainly come.
Everyone was gone.
“Lily, you have to stay right here okay?” I motioned for her to sit next to me. “Wish me luck?” I gave her a kiss on the nose but made no effort to look her in the eye, knowing full well I may have just said ‘goodbye.’
it is what it is.
Now to dive.