Disclaimer: I own Harry Potter. That's right. I own Microsoft Inc.,
too, and I'm cheating on Alexei Yagudin with David Beckham.
I'm compelled to leave it at that, but to save my butt: I'm a liar.
Bottle Green
Sometimes you wonder how life got this way. The memories that stand out - the clearest, purest of them - insist on languid pleasures, idyllic days spent grasping at daydreams. They whisper of you floating easily above the world like dragonflies over some deep forest pond, sun beating down on your backs and faces and hands. Everything had shimmered then, a golden radiance that promised so much vitality, so much life.
Everything still shines, only now they do with gleam rather than glimmer. The oily disco lights of the bars, the merciless yellowed fluorescence of the washrooms, the dim wash of electricity in your apartment. Faced with them for too long and you begin to loose track of what you were seeing, only the surrogate of your sight, only that dull ache behind your eyes. And that was fine, too, because there was nothing you particularly wished to lay eyes on, anyways. There was, once, a long time ago, and it had brought with it a hurt worse than the incessant flashing brightness, much worse, and now there was no more.
Bottle green, someone once told you your eyes were. You've since had quite many opportunities for comparison, turning the cool tinted glass over and over in your hands. Sometimes you even glimpse yourselves in the mirror, and past the gaunt shadows and bloodshot veins the green is indeed similar - although you don't know whether the colour had simply burnt onto your eyes, or maybe even had suffused through your entire body. You don't much care what you look like, anyways, although sometimes when you catch yourself stumbling past in some darkened store window you start, taken aback by the phantasm mirror image that is and is not you, that looked like you salted and strung out to dry.
What road led from there to here? You try to recall but the memories are treacherously elusive like fat silver minnows in the lake, the lake on Hogwarts ground that nobody knew about but you and somebody else. Somebody. Boy. Pupil. Enemy. Villain. Lover.
Maybe it is just as well, that the memories slip away through your fingers. All that matters really is the liquid that doesn't run anywhere but down your throat, that soothes you when the former cannot, that breathes soft warmth into you almost like the other thing used to. This, this thing now, this will never leave you, is all you had, gleaming quiet promise from hard green-tinged bottles. Bottles. Sour. Sweet.
Trail of fire, sharp and surprising, then just warm, sun-kissed softness, essence that lingers on each subsequent breath. Breath. Breathe. Rising chest, up and down, mother-of-pearl whiteness, unmarred unmarked untasted skin. Skin. Bruised and bleeding, warm, pulsating, swollen. No. Yes. Green. Gray.
Someday, you think, you will have to wake up sober. And then, then, then it will come back. Maybe it will be your mind, sharp after so long, that cuts your inured heart. Maybe it will be him, back after so long, who sinks the knife in. One and the same. The same.
But for now, you were safe. Safe, locked in the embrace of fiery warmth, the unbreakable glaze of bottle green.
I'm compelled to leave it at that, but to save my butt: I'm a liar.
Bottle Green
Sometimes you wonder how life got this way. The memories that stand out - the clearest, purest of them - insist on languid pleasures, idyllic days spent grasping at daydreams. They whisper of you floating easily above the world like dragonflies over some deep forest pond, sun beating down on your backs and faces and hands. Everything had shimmered then, a golden radiance that promised so much vitality, so much life.
Everything still shines, only now they do with gleam rather than glimmer. The oily disco lights of the bars, the merciless yellowed fluorescence of the washrooms, the dim wash of electricity in your apartment. Faced with them for too long and you begin to loose track of what you were seeing, only the surrogate of your sight, only that dull ache behind your eyes. And that was fine, too, because there was nothing you particularly wished to lay eyes on, anyways. There was, once, a long time ago, and it had brought with it a hurt worse than the incessant flashing brightness, much worse, and now there was no more.
Bottle green, someone once told you your eyes were. You've since had quite many opportunities for comparison, turning the cool tinted glass over and over in your hands. Sometimes you even glimpse yourselves in the mirror, and past the gaunt shadows and bloodshot veins the green is indeed similar - although you don't know whether the colour had simply burnt onto your eyes, or maybe even had suffused through your entire body. You don't much care what you look like, anyways, although sometimes when you catch yourself stumbling past in some darkened store window you start, taken aback by the phantasm mirror image that is and is not you, that looked like you salted and strung out to dry.
What road led from there to here? You try to recall but the memories are treacherously elusive like fat silver minnows in the lake, the lake on Hogwarts ground that nobody knew about but you and somebody else. Somebody. Boy. Pupil. Enemy. Villain. Lover.
Maybe it is just as well, that the memories slip away through your fingers. All that matters really is the liquid that doesn't run anywhere but down your throat, that soothes you when the former cannot, that breathes soft warmth into you almost like the other thing used to. This, this thing now, this will never leave you, is all you had, gleaming quiet promise from hard green-tinged bottles. Bottles. Sour. Sweet.
Trail of fire, sharp and surprising, then just warm, sun-kissed softness, essence that lingers on each subsequent breath. Breath. Breathe. Rising chest, up and down, mother-of-pearl whiteness, unmarred unmarked untasted skin. Skin. Bruised and bleeding, warm, pulsating, swollen. No. Yes. Green. Gray.
Someday, you think, you will have to wake up sober. And then, then, then it will come back. Maybe it will be your mind, sharp after so long, that cuts your inured heart. Maybe it will be him, back after so long, who sinks the knife in. One and the same. The same.
But for now, you were safe. Safe, locked in the embrace of fiery warmth, the unbreakable glaze of bottle green.