A P N O E A

Rodolphus had never been a religious man. When his wife turned to adoration and worship of a pale-skinned deity that was as cruel as it was grand, he remained outside. He had never learned to follow others on a road he was not quite sure it was his own, too, to take. His hands were empty.

He couldn't keep up. The tapestries of their home were smeared with his anxiety. He liked to believe it was a beginning. It had ever only really been a beginning, and he regretted it. How she put him on. Bellatrix was abrasive, and in the long run it was tougher than he'd expected.

And while he failed to believe in the workings of time, or his own head, in his own strength, the credibility of their Cause, though never spoken, he decided he would stand by his love. No matter how it ended. He believed in her. He was sure of that.

He listened to the sandy drone of the radio that sat in the corner. If my man was fighting / Some unholy war / I would be behind him / I'd be right beside him / With strength he didn't know. He scoffed. Those silly love songs always led people to misiterpret. The strength that was much harder to come by in life was not the rash, stone-busting kind that shone in a few memorable moments and monumental decisions. The kind he needed, and craved, was the silent enduring one that made him keep going even through strain and wear that ate away at him with every passing day. It was hard. Little did he know. Life had never been hard on him before, he mused. Love, love, wretched suffering.

He can't lose / With me in tow

I'd refuse to let him go

Is this enough shelter and this is called Happiness? Maybe you only need to turn around once more.

Bellatrix turned from her husband. She moved from his gentle hand he used to try and gently coax her to find sleep, finally. He cracked one eye open, straining. „You really need to sleep a lil' bit. You' ve been up for nearly three days now", he rasped sympathetically. She found his face with unseeing eyes. Suddenly she was angry at him for doing absolutely nothing.

He wouldn't see. She was far from resenting him, but he didn't understand. He didn't get things. She focused just in time to see his mouth lilt open with a grunting snore. You are asleep – I won't attempt to wake you. You don't believe – I won't attempt to make you.

Fool.

These are surfaces I want to describe to you.

I feel: nothing.

Do you want: absolution?

She couldn't sleep. She couldn't. Her body couldn't go on any longer but her head only wanted to begin, to spin, keep spinning, keep leaving tiny marbles clutttering the space all around her, hurling them out with every movement of her salty eyes. Smears of colour on her retina followed the lights as she spun.

Panging in her chest, noise in her ear, thoughts running, sweat-soaked; He kept her up would not let her lie down or rest – her weary head - her wired brain. North – east – south – floor. Her skull was oscillating and the humming would not cease.

Staying awake always left her sullied. It mad her unclean. She was unable to shake the thoughts from her mind, shake the feeling that something was off and broken and never would be quite the same as it was before. Now that she had realized the most terrifying thing – she never felt that kind of love for Rodolphos, now she came to really think about it. She did not love him. As simple as that. She wouldn't be feeling dirty for that kind of realization, though, she wouldn't put herself through such things; she felt more like a stone in the desert the laden winds kept washing over, leaving their stony remainders in every crevice.

She chipped away at the minuscule portions of dirt that kept attaching themselves to every nook and cranny of her hands. The rims of her nails. Then peeling at the dead skin around it. Getting hold of a small flap, pulling, tearing it down all the way past the base of her thumb, leaving a red moist line where her flesh was revealed. She proceeded to fray the hole out further.

Whenever the need to chew the flesh off her fingers subsided, she went and treaded over to the fewsteps leading to the garden that adjoined their makeshift bedroom. She left scuffs on the carpet where she had placed her feet, in the shape of her soles.

She blinked particles out of her eyes. The garden was left growing wild, left to itself. Bellatrix was grateful for that small piece of neglected land. She liked the garden. She felt the cold soil beneath her heels, felt its wetness sticking to her skin between her toes. The floor was sticky.

We kick what we love with our feet.

Omnipresent noise buzzing grains of sand scraping each other fueled by the ever-rolling spray of the sea sandpaper on her eardrums her sanity -

She breathed in, out. Red dots were streaming out with her breath. The air was so heavy humid it felt like breathing water. Green water of a small lake alive with thousands of small twitching creatures. She walked down to the shore the lazy water rubbed itself against, not really lapping, not really managing to build proper waves. The blades of grass were looking at her. At the edge, I feel thine hands, and waited. She wanted to become a snail. A snail without a house. Born slippy. Not gathering sand when it crept. Wanted to dissappear into the Earth beneath the dirt, to vanish, to dissolve, wood, dark, cold, wet, dying.

In the depths of the soil slides my soul / silent like a comet

-x

Disclaimers

Lyrics of „Some Unholy War" by Amy Winehouse

Lines „YOU don't believe – I won't attempt to make ye;

YOU are asleep – I won't attempt to wake ye" by William Blake.

Last line by Tomas Tranströmer, freely translated.