Head Is Not My Home
I lie awake, my eyes strapped open. Johanna sleeps in her bed parallel to mine and she sleeps fitfully. The sheets suffocate her skeletal body and she occasionally thrashes against the restraint of them.
I feel both apathy and pity as I listen to rustle of her sheets, the thump of her mallet fists on the mattress. Anxiety climbs the column of my throat at the sounds coming from hers and I shut my eyes against the noise.
I have Prim. I have my mother. I have Gale, Finnick, Haymitch. I have Peeta. Or rather, I had Peeta and I will have him back. I have love inside of me and I have places to put it, hearts to stow it in. Ribcage hearths that crackle.
I can hardly ache for cold chimneys, the ashes of places where I used to hide my love. My father. Cinna. My throat tightens as I think of Rue and I think that for a long time it will be her who hurts me most. But as Johanna wakes herself with her own screams, I feel foolish for grieving. I have Prim. I will be okay because I have Prim and Johanna has no one. I am capable of escaping my mind, I have other spaces to occupy.
She has no beating hearts to stow her sorrow in, to stow her love.
She has the worst excuse for a roommate and a sickening case of morphling withdrawal. She has scars and scabs that hold to her skin like peeling bark. Her hair is shaven off and her body is frail.
I hold my eyes shut out of respect for her. I don't need her to know I am awake listening to her nightmares.
She seems to know I had tuned in, anyway.
"I would say I'm sorry, but I hear you at night, too," she says, dully. I would've expected malice in her tone, but it's more a truthful statement than a sarcastic comment.
"I'm sorry," I say. I don't know if I'm apologizing for my own night fits or for being awake. I'm not sure either things warrant an apology, but I don't know what else to say.
"Whatever," Johanna turns her back to me and yanks the sheets over her shoulders.
I think of Peeta. How he would hold me at night, how he could sometimes ward off the nightmares and how sometimes he couldn't. I think of how despite he went through many of the same horrors I did, he ranked my needs a priority above his and he let me cry.
I watch Johanna's back for a few minutes and I can tell from her erratic pattern of breathing that she isn't on the way to falling back asleep. For a moment, I squeeze my eyes shut and visualize all the ways in which this could backfire, which I feel it most likely will, and I almost turn my back to her as well when I hear a hitch in her skipping breaths. I pull the sheets from my body and touch my bare feet to the floor, approaching her bed.
I'm not a person that craves physical contact often and I never got the idea that Johanna was either, but I think of Peeta again and how listening to the slow kick-drum of his heart helped me sleep.
My knees sink into the mattress and I touch one hand to the sharp edge of her shoulder blade buried like a knife hilt-first into her back.
"Don't," she hisses, but she doesn't jerk away from me.
Bruises color her skin in the shades of murky paint water and they ripple along her back and arms. I can see scabs on her scalp from here where little twigs of hair have not been able to grow through. I watch her coat hanger shoulders tremble and bend and I ache. I'm looking down at myself once I have nothing left and the sight clogs my throat.
"I'm sorry," I repeat, my voice raspy from my dry throat. I gently hold one of her bruises under the palm of my hand. And I weep for her. I weep for me and I weep for Panem.
She turns to me now and I see the tracks of tears on her cheeks, the pools of them held in the half moons under her eyes. I get the feeling she hasn't allowed herself to cry until now.
"Stop saying that," she spits and I feel the anxiety rising in my chest like water filling my lungs.
I say it again and again. I tell her I'm sorry until my words are too thick with gravel to come out of my mouth. Boulders stuck in my throat. And even then my lips still form the words, but the only sounds I make are choked. She grips my shoulders and I shake my head and while I try to crush my apology between my teeth, I can't stop saying it, or trying to say it.
Between the darkness and my tear-blurred eyes, I can hardly see, but I notice her beginning to sit up and I think she may be leaving. My panic seizes me by the spine and I struggle to stop crying. Solitude suddenly terrifies me. I'm disgusted with myself.
Around my rapid, shallow breaths, I feel her calloused fingers slip between mine and my panic melds with confusion. She's still crying, too, and she's looking down at our joined hands and she is rocking back and forth. I remember my original intention and realize it has backfired on me in a rare scenario that I didn't predict.
I watch her and I wait. Because I have Prim, I have my mother, I have Gale, Finnick, Haymitch. I want her to know she has me. Suddenly I'm desperate for her to know she is not alone.
Her head remains lowered as she slowly leans into me and tucks it under my chin, her breath against my throat. My lungs relish in the calm moment as I'm finally able to inflate them properly. I lightly draw my fingertips over the colors on her back as if I possess the means to erase them, to revert her skin back to the blank canvas it was. My vocal cries cease, however, tears still mark their way down my face.
"Promise me," she whispers fiercely and I feel her words pulse under my skin. "Promise me, that however this rebellion ends, whether or not we're able to pull it off...you promise me that Snow dies."
Her words manage to shovel some of the rocks out of my mouth and my cracked lips pull back to tell her easily, "I promise."
She nods against my collar bone and I feel her breathe. And I feel the weight of our promise even though I've sworn the same thing to myself a thousand times. She's tethered to it now.
"They've taken everything from me," she murmurs after a moment and I think she might begin to sob again. I've barely begun to stop. Instead, her bony fingers knot themselves into the material of my shirt and I wonder if she's imagining herself strangling President Snow.
"I know," I say and intimately press my chapped lips to her shaven head, taking care to avoid the sores on her scalp. She sighs and I take the reaction to be one of relaxation, so my fear of negative retaliation ebbs away as I focus on the gentle thrum of her heartbeat against mine.
I make no attempt to move from our embrace and Johanna doesn't, either. Our alliance has grown from forced to accepted, and now even cherished. Although, I doubt either of us will acknowledge this tomorrow. I feel rather out of my skin myself, so I can't imagine Johanna wanting to revisit the image of her crying with me on her bed, hugging and making promises. Still, we are changed.
Her fingers relax from their grip on my shirt to rest flatly against my stomach and I close my eyes. In my chest I prepare a space for her to put her things.
Fin