Dear Tom: A Plea
(in form of a poem)
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Dear Tom,
I couldn't sleep after I wrote my last
mad-scripted letter, curling in my thin bed
and hugging myself as I huddled. It was so
silly of me, even entertaining the silent fear
you would somehow answer – you always
did, Tom, even those times I could sense
anger in your careful, charming words –
passing through death and filtering into
my life.
I remembered, crying for fear of you under
the slim protection of my sheets, the feel of
blood on my fingers and when, finally, I
knew the blood was because of you. It took
all my soul last night to keep from imagining what
could happen – would happen to me. If you
were free to read and respond, piercing
death in favor of tangible life,
what could you then do to me?
You nearly killed me once and I knew, through
my insanity – have I gone insane, Tom? – and
with my terror, salt and tears and sweat, if
you could, you would kill me now. You must
hate me for everything. Being a fool, being
weak. Whining to you, boring the
darkness of your mind. Loving Harry with all
that held me clasped together.
But I made it through the night,
sanity anchoring itself firmly in my being to
assist the morning dawn – warm, golden, and soft
as it brushed through the window over me – in
its saving chore. Relief at knowing you are
still locked deep in death's embrace and I am safe
from you, wrapped in gilded sheaths of life.
I live while you cease.
Do you hate me for this, Tom? Do you seethe
in whatever hell you created, waiting and
biding the burning, the humiliation, and the eternity
granted you in justice's name for those
dead by your hands? Do you think on me with
disgust and hate for daring, even once, to
defy your horrible power? Yet I still live.
I hate you, Tom! I want you
to know I will never let my walls fade long enough,
far enough, for me to ever think of you as friend,
confidante, enigmatic pen-pal, and most certainly,
with all my revulsion and hatred, I don't want that
ghostly trace of you coming to me at
night when I work.
I do not allow you the right to seduce me, no
matter how I once cared, no matter how your spectral
fingers tease at my hair or your handsome
choir-boy's voice speaks gently,
charmingly, lovingly to me. I cannot let in the
shard of your soul that replaced my own ragged, twisted
piece, must not acknowledge part
of you remains in me: you beat in my heart,
pulse in liquid warmth with the flow of my tidal blood,
render me voiceless when I see Harry.
I scrounge together the unwinding threads of my
courage and hurriedly weave them into a scrap
of cloth to preserve my bravery and intentions, bearing
it as I move to draw his attention. I think,
maybe, if only those green eyes would fall on me and
still, trembling with surprise to see how – but I never
get that far. I see brown eyes in my mind,
powerful and condescending, red flickers in the centre
that grow in malevolence when your voice
grows enchanting.
You used me and ruined me, Tom,
reshaped the part of me that trusts and loves so I
can't give as freely as I should. I'm a Weasley!
I'm supposed to love and spread my heart
thin with affection and joy, not spy shadows in moments of
brilliant light where shadows are not meant to exist.
I want to tell Harry I love him – I do, don't I,
I always have, Tom, it isn't something I can control –
but that sliver of me that is you screams for me
to step back, close my eyes, stay away from him.
Even in death you have to control at least one
person, don't you, no matter if it is a small woman of
twenty years with freckles and
strawberry hair that frizzes when storms break. You
won't let me love him, Tom, and I hate you for
that, so much it hurts my soul sometimes.
And when I stumble out of the room, tears
stinging my face and shame at my failing strength
spearing my heart, it isn't Harry who follows
to comfort. Is that why you stuck that insidious
piece in my soul? To sabotage my emotions and soothe
me in the frail moments with the dark, ghostly
magic that brings you to play with me cruelly when you wish?
I can't be alone because of you, I can
never truly be alone; you fill me, reminding me of what I
think – oh God I hope I'm just mad or daft or insane and
that you never had that power – is the resurrecting tendril left
this time. Death did not come easily to you, and you've
come back from hell's threshold one – two –
over and again.
Don't use me anymore. If you did quilt your soul to
mine, I can't let you use me to flow once more
from death to life. I can't let you kill Harry!
And now sunlight is fading to twilight, shafts
of gold into shafts of violent. My fingers
are going numb again, and my knuckles are tightening.
Are you here, Tom? Are you reading what I'm scripting as
you dredge out of my soul? I can feel a fingertip under my ear,
a careful touch of chilled spectre flesh to molten human's,
as if – maybe – you are draining a little of my soul each
time, as once you did. Where do you come from, why
don't you come every night, does simply coming
to touch the living tire you?
Go away. Go back to your
hell and stop tormenting me. I'm still living, and I'm
afraid if I should die – my hands, your hands,
God's, whoever finds the time right – I will be
trapped in death with you.
The sun is going and I'll be alone in moment, alone
but frozen in fear and old caring with this darkness of you. Tom,
I'm scared.
Ginny.
-
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Many thanks to MysticSorceror, Diamond Absinthe, and SibilantSybil. Very appreciated, all. ^^
