Imaginary Elegies - Michael
Title: Imaginary Elegies
Author: Aspen Snow
Character: Michael
Rating: PG
Summary: Prison isn't what he expected. He forgets. Hope can't be had.
Prison isn't what he expected it to be. There is no solitude, no quiet.
Even at night, locked in cells sleeping in the dark, he hears whispers and movement, feels the weight of the thoughts and dreams of thousands of men pressing down on him─ hot and sticky. His nightmares, sometimes, are hard and fast impressions of these thoughts that hang in the air like smoke.
But they only haunt when they brush by, when he breathes too deeply.
Most times, his nightmares are his. He dreams, then, of his brother dying because he is guilty. He dreams of being wrong.
He wonders if the weight of his nightmares sometimes fall into the dreams of his brother. Because every once in awhile he dreams of being in this place, and that is his brother's nightmare, he knows.
*
In church, he always sits in the pew behind his brother, he likes to watch him sitting there without him knowing, likes to let his eyes linger in leisure over his profile.
He forgets it everyday, loses its simplistic shape in the chaos of details he can't help but hold onto. He tries to make up for it now, by tracing and memorizing the curves and lines. But his brother abandoned him once, so he lets himself forget, a day at a time, how the shadows dull the strong edges of his face, make him nothing more than a lonely man about to break.
*
The men around him pray with heads bowed, they hope with whispered breaths.
But he knows better, it's why he watches, why he doesn't search for absolution in the dark with eyes closed.
Hope, he knows, is alive only in sight for a second before the eye blinks it away.
It is there only in the way his brother's fingers are folded neatly upon each other, still within their metal shackles, at peace, for a moment.
But then he blinks, and that second of glimpsed hope is gone, his brother's fingers move, searching for a bit of free air, restless, as limbs too long restrained are apt to be.
Hope can't be had. It can only be seen out of the corner of the eye, in moments too tiny to be believed in, in glimpses so temporary they tempt the senses to savor.
It's why he is here, this temporary hope that entices him so fleetingly to believe, it's why he has this plan. In those small small moments before he blinks his brother sits so still that he forgets that he is a man dying in minutes and hours and days.
Hope breathes in, breathes out.
It's there, and then it isn't.
In prison, he's learned to watch.
Hope is there only in the red, yellow, green, stained glass windows that bring in rays of light alive with color, so vibrant with breath and body amongst all the muted darkness.
Author: Aspen Snow
Character: Michael
Rating: PG
Summary: Prison isn't what he expected. He forgets. Hope can't be had.
Prison isn't what he expected it to be. There is no solitude, no quiet.
Even at night, locked in cells sleeping in the dark, he hears whispers and movement, feels the weight of the thoughts and dreams of thousands of men pressing down on him─ hot and sticky. His nightmares, sometimes, are hard and fast impressions of these thoughts that hang in the air like smoke.
But they only haunt when they brush by, when he breathes too deeply.
Most times, his nightmares are his. He dreams, then, of his brother dying because he is guilty. He dreams of being wrong.
He wonders if the weight of his nightmares sometimes fall into the dreams of his brother. Because every once in awhile he dreams of being in this place, and that is his brother's nightmare, he knows.
*
In church, he always sits in the pew behind his brother, he likes to watch him sitting there without him knowing, likes to let his eyes linger in leisure over his profile.
He forgets it everyday, loses its simplistic shape in the chaos of details he can't help but hold onto. He tries to make up for it now, by tracing and memorizing the curves and lines. But his brother abandoned him once, so he lets himself forget, a day at a time, how the shadows dull the strong edges of his face, make him nothing more than a lonely man about to break.
*
The men around him pray with heads bowed, they hope with whispered breaths.
But he knows better, it's why he watches, why he doesn't search for absolution in the dark with eyes closed.
Hope, he knows, is alive only in sight for a second before the eye blinks it away.
It is there only in the way his brother's fingers are folded neatly upon each other, still within their metal shackles, at peace, for a moment.
But then he blinks, and that second of glimpsed hope is gone, his brother's fingers move, searching for a bit of free air, restless, as limbs too long restrained are apt to be.
Hope can't be had. It can only be seen out of the corner of the eye, in moments too tiny to be believed in, in glimpses so temporary they tempt the senses to savor.
It's why he is here, this temporary hope that entices him so fleetingly to believe, it's why he has this plan. In those small small moments before he blinks his brother sits so still that he forgets that he is a man dying in minutes and hours and days.
Hope breathes in, breathes out.
It's there, and then it isn't.
In prison, he's learned to watch.
Hope is there only in the red, yellow, green, stained glass windows that bring in rays of light alive with color, so vibrant with breath and body amongst all the muted darkness.