i love you still among these cold things (amy, writing, eleven)
i love you still among these cold things | doctor who | amy (writing, eleven) | 500 words | for clockwork-hart1 who prompted
refusal to confront them directly
does not make you a lesser warrior
pick up your pen
unleash upon them your paper monsters
(fight the good fight.)
oh, and, i stole the title from neruda.
-- and if you have ever loved him, it is here and now, when his hair is still shining brown on his head, and his suit is still torn into pieces and you haven't allowed him to ruin you --
yet
-- you are a star, and you are magnificent, and you fit a whole lot of nothing into the next twelve years of a life without the sky, some wounds perpetually fresh at the tip your tongue. fish fingers and custard, and a ruined childhood. it would make a good title for the story you might never write, because stories are the first thing you had to let go off, when you let go of --
-- you start writing again, fourteen years, two unexplained absensences and one elopement later. because it is, it is an elopement, even if you have no plans of ever marrying him. my life in your hands, he will curse you some time in the future, masking it as a blessing, as if you had any space left in your lungs that could contain such naive thoughts, as if --
(was it worth it?)
-- you write with blood and tears, on paper, on laptops, on your skin, on the insides of your aging body that will never again yield anything other than words. he did that to you, too, and still does - leaves you to save yourself, leaves you to -- leaves you
-- which, in the end is why you write, which in turn is how you write. he would understand - maybe, you qualify to yourself carefully, lungs slowly filling with air. perhaps. for the oldest runaway in the universe, whose adventures are as much as an excuse for a lack of life as they are adventures, you are not sure he would quite understand writing instead of running. then again, after all this time, you are something he has never been, which in itself is a well of wisdom he will never have access to --
-- you are human, you are --
-- so, writing, you begin your tale, and the words stratch your skin with blood, is a lot like running.
(shut up, of course it was.)
-- in the end, none of your novels begin with running, or writing. one of them, though, ends --
-- a beautiful boy, standing on a beautiful meadow, his heart a heap of dust in his hands, that used to be a girl, that used to --
-- and if you have ever loved him, it is here and now, while his tears are still gleaming golden on his cheeks, and his suit is not yet stained with grass, when you have long ago allowed yourself to ruin him.