i carry your heart, i carry it in my heart

by fin du globe

Three steps in a relationship to regret - the untimely beginning, the falling apart, and everything you've ever said and done and been. / Astoria, Michael, and the war that was their relationship.

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

---

Astoria,

You are
such an
arse-toe-rear.
And I hope
you die
quite slowly
and painfully.

Awaiting news
of your demise,
Michael.

—

Corner,

I think
you are
quite possibly
certifiably
insane.

Ticked off,
A. Greengrass.

—

Greengrass,

Are you really
that dumb?
I think it's
the weed
in your name,
is it not?

Funny,
you never
struck me
as the type
to do drugs.

And honestly?
Splitting words up
does not
make it
a poem.

MC

—

Oy you,

I think
your name
is sharper
than your brain.

And guess what?
Drugs
are the best thing
you're ever,
ever,
ever
going to do.

Dude.
Like,
get laid.

Point
reiterated
in response
to last stanza.

And trying
to be anonymous
really doesn't
suit you.

Your stupidity
kind of
singles
you
out.

Now please
fuck off.

—

Well,
you started it.
You aren't
supposed
to show old
school yearbooks
to someone's
fiancé.

In fact,
it's kind of
your fault
that I never
get laid.

M. Corner.

—

Mt. Corner,

Nice to see
that the smarts
finally caught up.
Too late,
too little,
though.

I don't suppose
you're that fond
of Firewhisky
or pink flamingoes
or handcuffs
anymore?

All's fair—
I still
am single
and it's only thanks
to that bloody
fiasco
you caused
last year.

Sincerely,
Astoria Not-A-Well G.

—

Miss Greengrass,

All you've said
applies to you
too.

Maybe even
especially.

Only
you're still single
but that's
your own fault.

Corner.

—

M,

If you
are trying
that desperately
to be funny,
I suggest
you write
fucking limericks
instead.

Anything to lessen
my time span
of torture.

And you're a liar.
(Still.)
You have never
even
changed
one
bit.

—

And your words
are fucking gospel,
is it?

Because I never,
never loved you.

And don't pretend
that you did.

That you never
meant
for this
to happen.

Fucking Slytherin.
Telling the truth
with selfish intention.

—

You're some liar.

When you loved me
(if you ever did)

you spoke in riddles
as though walls
couldn't hear;
as though eyes
couldn't see.
(It was never
about the words
but the singular
syllable
that rolled off
the tongue
all barb and velvet.)

you wrote
unrhyming
poems
on the verse
of your sleeve
where neither
kept the heart

you kissed the flowers crushed beneath your feet
let them bleed—
just to make me come running.

So don't
pretend.

(But never acknowledge it either.)

—
You're correct, then.
Put much thought
into it, though.

So I assume
that you know
that it was never
about the
pink flamingoes
or the handcuffs
or the Firewhisky
but .

Listen to yourself—
The war's over.
We
are over.

—

You're wrong, Michael.
You're wrong.

Slytherins
don't wear
their heart
(if any)
on their sleeves,
nor their plans
in their eyes,
and we certainly
are not
ones
of sentiment.

And you're wrong.
Again.

We were the war, Michael.

We were the war.

—

Nothing
would have
happened
if it weren't
for the war.

I would never
have kissed you
(silver and blue—
a combination that
would never
have worked
anyway)—

under the stars
because
you would never
have needed
to know about
Orion
and
if Aphrodite
had a constellation.

I would never
have licked the
blood
off your skin
(like that)
or the tears
and mist that
curtained
our antics.

(And that
is all
they still are—
antics.)

I would never
have slammed you
into the floor
when I realised you
were still alive,

and the bruises
I marked
onto
your lips
were never
meant to be
[ salty ].

Nothing
would have
happened
if it weren't

for ashes scattered
in the wind,

for the maw
of grief that
ripped us
(both)
bloody,

for the addiction
to the sound
of our
cracking
bones
against the stained
sheets
of blood—
where they always
brought in
the dead.

Nothing
would have
happened
if it weren't
for the war,

if it weren't
for the need,

if it weren't
for the psyche
for the desire
for the escapism
for the stars
for your

existence.

Nothing
would have
happened
if it never.

—

then how can I? how?

to make black coffee in the mornings
just so I would not
dream of death
at the desk,
when a lifetime
ago

we dripped caffeine
into blood

to stay alive
in the fight
to stay awake
away from nightmares'
cold hands?

to gaze upon
smiling, innocent
children
haloed by the morning glow
we never felt,
when eons ago

we saw
soldiers fall
to dust and bones
just to save
an impracticality
to avoid
immorality?

to feel moonlight
fall in angles
casting shadows
upon my face,
when Time-Turners ago

silverlight sheathed
upon the mask
like that -
meant any mission
that could end
with shoeboxes filled
with a body -
a jack-in-the-box?

to wither away
in the cold embrace
of white walls at work,
when so long ago

white walls
meant insanity
or capture
or both
by definition?

how do I live
when I can't give up
the instincts
the heartlessness
the heat
the nerve
the blood
of a soldier
but

still hold
the wicked dream
of a civilian
before my eyes?

How?

—

Astoria,

there was once
in a timeline separate
from the immediate
explosions of
dust and robe
magic and cruelty
of war, when

I saw your eyes—

insanity.

(Still it haunts me.)

Maybe you
will not read this
but—

Maybe you won't
quite remember,
or maybe you
won't want
to,
but—

I remember with the clarity
of a rainy day.

Because,
when we found you,
I knew what
insanity felt like.

(Maybe
it was
contagious.)

Your hands
(so small)
tied behind
your back,

your body
(so breakable)
suspended
by a single rope
knotted
against
your wrists,

the corpses
of dead house-elves
hanging like chandeliers
from your ankles.

flames constantly
licking the soul
at your feet.

(I doubt that
they never knew
about your
pyrophobia.)

and later
they told me
that you had
to face
so many
mock
executions
where they used
your father's
voice.

were you afraid?

that you
would leave this world
forever,

would never feel
fresh air after
cleansing rain
again?

snowballs shoved
down the hooded jacket,

happy bark of your dog
before it tackled you?

I was.

I was so afraid
I was going
to lose you.

I would be
so, so alone.

And I almost did,
after
we got you down
and blew up
the prison
we found you in.

You,
in a different world
where it was
torture—

for five months,
thirteen days,
six hours,
and three minutes

that felt
like eternities.

I remember

to drape
white handkerchiefs
over the words
you scratched
into the ground
in hysteria,

afraid
to even look
at them

to freeze
in the darkness
because
I couldn't even
stare
into the hearth
without thinking of you –

strung up and hopeless,
gone—

to kill even
the most
vicious of house-elves,
servants of the evil,
because I kept imagining
how they slain them
before your eyes

to sleep in the dark

because that
was how
they got you

and so much
more.

Astoria,

I can't look at you
without ever
being afraid
of losing you.

And I am so, so sorry.

Love,
Michael.

—

Mother always says,
that relationships
are a three-step
problem.

Confession,
foolishness,
and then,
marriage.

Ours was different—

It never
meant anything
at Hogwarts,

just a stupid
self-destruction

because

life and death
diverged at the stained
point of ancestry
and I had
the chemical defect
found
on the losing
side
and a cloak
in silver
and green
could be easily
tainted
by red.

because

you had a history
of failed relationships
behind you,
and your parents
could die anytime
and wars aren't for you
and you're a Ravenclaw
but getting
in cahoots
with Potter
never does anything
but worry you
and defy logic,
and your sister,
in Slytherin,
she's risking so much
by helping you,
but where
could you go
without her?

because

we were both
broken blue spark circuits
and even when we kissed
it wasn't fireworks,

just
awkward angles

a temporary reprieve
from the world

looking glass
at how fucked-up
everything
was getting.

And you would
whisper poor lies
into my mouth,
gently,
as though they
were fragile,

and I would
laugh
them off,
and drag
you in closer,
into
the
darkness
(how scary it is
to be alone).

we inked poems
into columns,
as though they were prayers
that could
be answered.

It was all
so
damned
foolish.

And it was
never even
love.

And then
came the war,
like a hurricane
that flung us
against the world—

a tangle of limbs,
always breathing
too loud
too hard.

Looking for hope in imperfections,
I kissed the hand
that struck down
a man, without
any remorse.

You bit
at my lips
too hard,
drawing blood,
because

you thought of
my sister
or my cousin
or my blood
that burned up
the ground.

Such a mess.

And we
held hands
as the world
blew apart
like asteroids herding
spaceships,

a single train
of thought
that stayed constant

that we could
pretend was
tangible,
in the mess
that was
the war.

Co-dependency,
camaraderie,
allies,
anything.

It was just
wanting a distraction
from the fear
of dying
or living
but being afraid
of crying
when we lost
the other;

and it never
would have happened
if it weren't
for the war,

because

You kissed me
and maybe others
and maybe a life
in front
of a marble coffin
when you were
sixteen
and when I was
fourteen.

And I still
think of you,
sometimes,
at the night,
when it is cold
and the sheets
more so—

the way
you tortured
the man who killed your father
again and again
and again—

Crucio, until
it was familiar
on your tongue
(but not
as familiar
as mine)

and laughed
when he begged
and in the end
I killed him.

Because he looked
like your father,
you bit out,
into my mouth,
teeth cutting
my lips
like razors.

The cigarette smoke
that you blew
into my hair,
white nicotine your comfort
when the snow
during Christmas
was redder
than white.

The taste
of Firewhisky
on your
tongue,
much too often,
when I closed
your bloodshot
eyes with
my cold,
cold fingers.

You would sneer
because you needed
something stronger
than coffee,

and I would never
clean up the wounds
on your flesh
from broken glass,
because
I would be
too busy
creating more.

You went into relapse once,
when they
held us prisoner
in the Manor.

Your skin
was so pale,
in my fever,
I once thought
you were a seraphim.

Your eyes glassed over
so many times.

I held your hand,
cold and still. Watched
your breathing,
laboured in the night,
afraid for
the rise and fall
of your chest.

In delirium,
I heard you
cry out
for your father,

I heard you weep
for your sister,
your mother.

Over again,
the screams
that accompanied
my dreams to sleep.

I broke
your bones
when you tried
to strangle me,
once.

And I didn't
even
frown.

And when we got out,
you pissed the beds
at night whenever
you dreamt
of the hallucinations
or how they
beat us.

Your eyes still glassed over
whenever you heard
the name—

Malfoy.

You even drank more,
just not wine,
but coffee,
blacker than
our souls.
Kept away
the shackles
fevered dreams
brought.

We were
the grime
scraped off
the drop-off point
in the world,

balancing on
a last act
of sanity.

Then the world
and other worlds
crashed down
from the weight
of holding
so many corpses
and everyone
tried
to go back
to 'normal'.

We brushed our teeth,
did the laundry,
laughed at cold jokes,
acted like deaf men.

Tried to run
from Mnemosyne's
dark servants
and Dionysus'
grapevines that sought
to bring us back
to madness.

The end of
anything –

all could've been
and maybe.

Mother always says
relationships
are a three-step
problem.

And ours
ended
in regret.

Goodbye,
Astoria Malfoy.

—

Astoria,

Don't marry him.

Please.

Love,
Michael.

---

A/N: Idek. *facepalm* Anyway, beta'd again by Clarissa&Wei Tian. Own nothin' but them mistakes. Written for the 2012 M&MWP competition. Poetry is hard. Oh, and, because I'm a terrible person, I have no idea how else to say that the time span between the letters vary.

Review?