Aureate
they called you bird bones (or something hollow)
It’s cold outside and it’s oh so very present in that lethargic, soul-pressing way. It feels sort of like being crushed under every name you can’t remember and every smile you couldn’t feel, like this paralysing, ever near fear of life. You walked outside today and saw a man smile like he was dying and you smiled back because you felt the same, and you both nodded and moved on with your timetable lives because you’re predictable, fearful citizens of your society.
It rained, on the 13th of September, and it was cold outside. You don’t remember it that well, but he sometimes breathes like he does and you are reminded of a chill that froze your happiness in your marrow; if there were such a happiness to be found. It was a hope that your lungs would fill with water and drown you a sweet lullaby but you left for work instead and sat in your office for eight hours before realising you wanted to die.
You went home and couldn’t decide how to do it [you like pills and you like drowning but you have a gun and you have a lighter] and in two hours you were drunk and staring at the crème wall of your empty apartment wandering why you still live here when you could be dead or moved to that nice apartment down the street that the estate agent had presented so prettily. Your possessions, you decide, are you.
So you buy nothing but alcohol and hope to become a numbing substance to the surplus population that thrives in work and schedule and all the things you can’t bring yourself to hate. Use me, you think, like they can hear, use me and drown in me and let me hang you over in the morning and hug you late at night. Let me destroy you piece by piece and I will give you comfort and confidence and I will give you an escape.
Then, you met a boy. He called himself Francis and when the sky was grey he would smile and say ‘rain, rain go away and come back another day’ in a sing song voice. And for the rest of the day you would sit in your cloud of nostalgia, remembering when you were young and alive, playing hopscotch and hoping your favourite trading cards were in stock next time mummy took you shopping. Except it’s two years later to when you were eight and mummy is dead and daddy blames you and you blame you and you grow up lonely and dead inside.
And you’re twenty eight and ready to die but you’re spoilt for choice in your society and everything has already been done and you might as well live except you really, really don’t want to. Francis wants to die, too, but he said ‘when I lose enough’ and you wonder what of. But, but you don’t care enough to ask and he doesn’t care enough to say.
So, so.
So you go to your work again and you do your paper work and you weigh the shadows under your eyes in stone and wonder if a car crash could happen on the 5th floor of a building and kill you all. You hope. Francis is always there, when you get back, with his multi coloured pills and his frazzled smile. You take one from his skeletal hand and spend the next nine hours staring at the ceiling that seems to go on forever.
You lose yourself in plaster and he cries and laughs into your shoulder. This, you think, is what your life is. This is what every moment up to now has been leading up to. A rundown apartment and a job you hate and a boy you love that wants to die. You don’t love him enough to live for him, or to save him. You love him enough to keep him around and cry with him. He’s your excuse to keep living when really you are just procrastinating.
I want to die, your diary says, and you agree whole heartedly. You want to die. You buy a knife and when you bring it home Francis smiles his hollow smile and together you watch it; the sadness in your bones weighing more than the calories Francis counts so devotedly ever could.
Scientists say that some people are born with a negative persuasion. It could be their genetics or it could be a chemical doing something it’s not supposed to; releasing too often or not enough. They say that some people are just ‘born sad’, born into depression and loneliness, born into emotions they can’t control. It’s so unfair you claw at the wall and your flesh rubs to the bones, painting the wall in red strips. Not fair, not fair, not fair, you chant under your breath. You didn’t ask for this. This life. You didn’t ask to be born and you didn’t ask to be pushed through the educational system and you didn’t ask to join this monotone, torturous society. You were born to live and die in a cage you couldn’t escape full of sadness you aren’t responsible for.
You tell Francis this, teeth gritted and bloody hands clenched. He listens as if enlightened and in the morning when you find him dead you light a cigarette and sigh out your lungs. He used the knife you bought, you note, and he left you a little scribbling on a letter. You don’t read it. You throw it in the bin and you close the door to his room. The cigarette burns out on your lips but you can’t bring yourself to care, staring at that ceiling like it means something. Greedy bastard, you think, taking all the pills with him. You want to see infinity and you want to breathe stardust, but you’re painfully sober.
Vodka is the key, you know. Daddy taught you that with his fists and for that you are thankful. You don’t own a coat to put on and you barely remember your shoes, such is your mind. You’re going to drown your sorrows and you’re going to swallow your nostalgia. Kill it all off because you can’t kill yourself. Bleed it all away to nothingness.
It’s cold, outside, and an old man smiles at you like there could be something worth living for.
It rained, on the 13th of September, and it was cold outside. You don’t remember it that well, but he sometimes breathes like he does and you are reminded of a chill that froze your happiness in your marrow; if there were such a happiness to be found. It was a hope that your lungs would fill with water and drown you a sweet lullaby but you left for work instead and sat in your office for eight hours before realising you wanted to die.
You went home and couldn’t decide how to do it [you like pills and you like drowning but you have a gun and you have a lighter] and in two hours you were drunk and staring at the crème wall of your empty apartment wandering why you still live here when you could be dead or moved to that nice apartment down the street that the estate agent had presented so prettily. Your possessions, you decide, are you.
So you buy nothing but alcohol and hope to become a numbing substance to the surplus population that thrives in work and schedule and all the things you can’t bring yourself to hate. Use me, you think, like they can hear, use me and drown in me and let me hang you over in the morning and hug you late at night. Let me destroy you piece by piece and I will give you comfort and confidence and I will give you an escape.
Then, you met a boy. He called himself Francis and when the sky was grey he would smile and say ‘rain, rain go away and come back another day’ in a sing song voice. And for the rest of the day you would sit in your cloud of nostalgia, remembering when you were young and alive, playing hopscotch and hoping your favourite trading cards were in stock next time mummy took you shopping. Except it’s two years later to when you were eight and mummy is dead and daddy blames you and you blame you and you grow up lonely and dead inside.
And you’re twenty eight and ready to die but you’re spoilt for choice in your society and everything has already been done and you might as well live except you really, really don’t want to. Francis wants to die, too, but he said ‘when I lose enough’ and you wonder what of. But, but you don’t care enough to ask and he doesn’t care enough to say.
So, so.
So you go to your work again and you do your paper work and you weigh the shadows under your eyes in stone and wonder if a car crash could happen on the 5th floor of a building and kill you all. You hope. Francis is always there, when you get back, with his multi coloured pills and his frazzled smile. You take one from his skeletal hand and spend the next nine hours staring at the ceiling that seems to go on forever.
You lose yourself in plaster and he cries and laughs into your shoulder. This, you think, is what your life is. This is what every moment up to now has been leading up to. A rundown apartment and a job you hate and a boy you love that wants to die. You don’t love him enough to live for him, or to save him. You love him enough to keep him around and cry with him. He’s your excuse to keep living when really you are just procrastinating.
I want to die, your diary says, and you agree whole heartedly. You want to die. You buy a knife and when you bring it home Francis smiles his hollow smile and together you watch it; the sadness in your bones weighing more than the calories Francis counts so devotedly ever could.
Scientists say that some people are born with a negative persuasion. It could be their genetics or it could be a chemical doing something it’s not supposed to; releasing too often or not enough. They say that some people are just ‘born sad’, born into depression and loneliness, born into emotions they can’t control. It’s so unfair you claw at the wall and your flesh rubs to the bones, painting the wall in red strips. Not fair, not fair, not fair, you chant under your breath. You didn’t ask for this. This life. You didn’t ask to be born and you didn’t ask to be pushed through the educational system and you didn’t ask to join this monotone, torturous society. You were born to live and die in a cage you couldn’t escape full of sadness you aren’t responsible for.
You tell Francis this, teeth gritted and bloody hands clenched. He listens as if enlightened and in the morning when you find him dead you light a cigarette and sigh out your lungs. He used the knife you bought, you note, and he left you a little scribbling on a letter. You don’t read it. You throw it in the bin and you close the door to his room. The cigarette burns out on your lips but you can’t bring yourself to care, staring at that ceiling like it means something. Greedy bastard, you think, taking all the pills with him. You want to see infinity and you want to breathe stardust, but you’re painfully sober.
Vodka is the key, you know. Daddy taught you that with his fists and for that you are thankful. You don’t own a coat to put on and you barely remember your shoes, such is your mind. You’re going to drown your sorrows and you’re going to swallow your nostalgia. Kill it all off because you can’t kill yourself. Bleed it all away to nothingness.
It’s cold, outside, and an old man smiles at you like there could be something worth living for.