Kasumi

Don’t bring me down,
I’m begging…
Sia- Don’t Bring Me Down

It hangs in the air like this forbidden feeling, and she watches as it curls so charmingly above her head that she could snatch it away. Suck the filmy, flimsy, whimsical feeling back inside and protect it. Guard it. The rain splashes hard but delicate drops of precipitation on the plastic pane window, on the window sill, and she thinks about how much she’d like to be out there. Out there with nothing but the starry sky, the trees and the rain, she’d hide from the golden-orange streetlight, and dance on the sopping grass—so black it looks like the ocean at midnight—barefooted. But that feeling, the one that lets the filter burn in the dark, has cemented her to this creature. Arms around her waist with eyes that sing, and if it was anything but that siren’s song she was sure to get away, yet the song makes her tremble just a little and she’s threatened to try and sink a little deeper. Just a little.

If only it wasn’t so tender, so enticingly soft and hazy, maybe then she would have said no, wouldn’t have put its mirrored image away. This feeling isn’t in a rush, and yet it’s so vehement it frightens her, with fibers of warmth that permeate so addictively underneath her skin. In these siren arms she feels so…fragile. Breakable. Thin. Pulled and stretched, a thousand pounding chemicals, resting on the power that a single molecule contains. Invigorating, and the thought dances through her head, until siren lips capture her own. And suddenly she’s out there, outside, becoming pure and healed, becoming fresh and clean, she’s out there becoming.

This isn’t real.

But you see she knows that already. Crisp and light, those small pieces of textured paper—to die for, but the real thing was worth so much more—laid rumpled on her cherry oak nightstand. Feathery weighted, cuddling into the large whorls that remind it of home, of its origins. Satin skin slides again and she begins to drift from her reverie into this small fantasy constructed with the walls of this room. She can never forget though, for the things which most need to be forgotten are the same things that help her remember that elegant face. The siren has the same kind, the same type, and if she thinks hard enough, distorts her vision, it becomes what she wants it to be. Her hands graze over hair that anti-colour, so far away from the delicate vibrancy of light, but it illuminates itself, and she can see the starlight dance in her hair. Starlight. Water lilies. Dove white. Purity.

Perhaps she should surrender, give into this siren, and let it be the looking-glass into what could have been. Elusive is this witchery but she follows it anyways, she’s as supple and moldable as the frail balance that hangs her upon the clouds. As weak as the power that keeps her world intact. A dozen colours stream across this rainwater illusion, and the lightning that crackles is an echo of the heat sizzling so smug, so contemptly inside her head. A million electrons trying to change this siren into something that matters—the siren’s meaning runs deeper than she already knows—and it shouldn’t be impossible, it should be easy, but it isn’t the same.

This isn’t real.

She’s knows, she’s repeated it, over and over again—heated prayer that is hummed from her lips. Yet she begged, got on her knees before Poseidon and pleaded for her to be submersed in the memory, to have a siren sing her to the rapture, because she could never do it by herself. The scabs growing in her mind and the writing on the walls tell her so time after time. So now, now when she thought she had made it, when for the first time she thought she felt something more valid than the glass strings she had with herself, she realizes that it was never there. She’s still sinking. Siren’s song which sneak tendril melodies through her that pick her apart, all lies, and mistruths, and reality. She clings harder, brings the siren in close, because the sound that the siren makes, the pretty little harmony ringing in her head, is dizzying, is something she can no longer do with out.

Waves crash.

Poseidon thunders his acceptance.

She is left with the evanescent fragments of taloned hands and angel wings, to drown.

When the broken siren leaves, taking its change from off the cluttered, homey, desk, she lights one more and watches as it burns from her lips in the mirror. Gauzy, hazy, muddled image of the face she wants to hide from, playing sadistic games of peek-a-boo. The sky crackles again startling her, flashing light creeping in, reminding her of everything that she wants to forget. And she’s thinking, maybe it is better to fade away in the rain.

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A/N: Thanks to all who have reviewed and who will review.