Stay Still For Me

-one shot-

By fatsoko

Like the thought that lingers lost within the mind, you stand wavering on a frozen scape, ready to flee, ready to fall, ready to launch yourself on an impossible mission to the moon. Your selfishness—your insecurity and indecisiveness—all of it I forgive.

So stay still for me.

Let me paint those scornful eyes—let me trace those coarse angry strands of hair. Stay still while I clasp that cold, unfeeling hand, ghosting those fingers embedded with black dirt.

Don’t move while I touch toes with you, while I mouth the emotions screaming through your body, my eyes reflecting the anguished boy I see in you. Just. Stay. Still. Won’t you?

I feel like I’m holding my breath. One meter. Two meters. Three below the surface. My ears hurt, my lungs are squeezed and my heart is beating faster from the fear of the way your glare sharks around me, warning me off, snapping near me, telling me that you’re thirsting for blood. I’m trying hard not to fall for your cheap trick.

Sit for me while I give you a meal. Don’t cast me that look of suspicion. Don’t squeeze that knife like I’m a predator. Rest for a while instead of tightening the laces of your shoes. Talk for a while instead of holding in all of your troubles, all of your tension, all of you.

We’re not so different are we? Don’t worry. I don’t mind that you just scoffed, that you just spit in my face. I’ll just wipe it off. No harm done.

I want to touch that crease and burn it to memory. It tells me that you smiled multiple times before, for someone else. Disgust flashes across your face. It’s okay. I know I shouldn’t expect a smile from you.

Shadows creep across your face like flies to a carcass, devouring, grotesque. You tell me you’re a dead man already and I don’t fight it. You’re right. If I close my eyes, I can see the blood dripping from your open wounds and the jaded mask ripped from your face. I want to say you’re crying beneath that mask but you aren’t. Tears don’t do anything for you. It couldn’t purge you of that monster inside of you. Your guilt, your scars, your self. I don’t know how to explain it. Words just wouldn’t do the expression hiding on your face justice.

One step at a time, people tell me. He’ll come around, they assure me. I see your smirk. Yes, I agree. You won’t come around. You aren’t that filled with hope, that naïve.

I want to say I’m tired and that I’ll just rest my head on my arms for a moment but if I do it, will I finally dream?

You tell me that the world is full of ironies and that you and I are just one of them. A girl full of stupid dreams sleeping in darkness and a boy stolen of dreams being forced to relive lies every night. You wonder why you’re here.

I wonder too but I don’t ask the question.

The food has gone cold but you don’t care. You haven’t even taken a bite. You twiddle with the fork and scrape it once or twice across the plate. I’m waiting for you to say you want to leave, like you always do. I’m waiting for you to throw things at me, to look at me like I’m lower than dirt.

We’re like strangers now who know too much about one another, trapped in a room forever, tied to it by a rubber band, always returning no matter how far we run. You once called me your friend but now you seem at a loss to call me anything. I hurt you so you hurt me. We said things we shouldn’t have said, did things that changed us. We no longer were the same people.

I told myself to stop but you gave in to temptation and went on your path of no return.

So why have you returned again? I said it out loud. You simply tell me that humans are never as simple as you want them to be. You say it so bitterly, as if you don’t quite understand why you return also.

I let out a sigh and close my eyes, my hands crossed over my stomach. We’re trapped in a drama, I whisper to him. Your eyes move to me chillingly as if telling me that this is not a joke.

I only wish it were a joke. If it were, maybe I would be able to finally chip away that final coat of stone to reveal warmth holed up in your statue. You tell me to not touch you, as if I have a disease. You push aside the cold meal and grab your coat. Usually you leave without a word but today seems different. You tell me your secret, your muscles tense. You don’t want to be like your father. But you don’t want to be yourself either.

One last time I want to ask you to say still but the words refuse to leave my lips. I watch you leave quickly, trying to burn to memory the silhouette of your back in the case that you don’t return. I don’t know if you’ll be back tomorrow or the week after that but I know that I’ll never have the courage to say those words. Stay still for me. Those words are only a dream to me and a nightmare to you.