that pale thing, a creature more than a human, jutted ribs and hollowed eyes and a skeleton which doesn’t fit in its body, which is clawing to escape her skin — not her.

here is what they don’t tell you — icarus laughed as he fell.

do we dream in different languages, I wonder, as if it matters. as if anything matters, but this, and this, and this.

grinning and cursing and spitting out the seawater that dried our mouths, diving over and over into the waves that came, and calmed, and rose again. i wouldn’t have minded, to be taken like that.

how fitting, for a world turned so irreparably upside-down.

i could barely hear my own voice over the roar of the ocean below, but it was enough. for this. for me.

always, there is someone walking away.

here is the girl, on top of the world.

the boy’s footsteps were not worth much.

the ocean, at this range, was not nearly as inviting as it had been just hours ago.