the hellraiser

I,” she says, “am always stuck. I am always stuck between giving people everything because I am dying to create meaningful relationships, and giving them nothing at all because then if they leave, at least I’ll be left whole.

Never before had Kaitlyn needed tutoring. She wasn’t supposed to need it. Girls like her were supposed to understand things and get good grades and appear to have a handle on school work as well as their personal life. But math, well, juggling AP calc on top of being, well, her, was not coming as easily as she’d hoped. So, she discreetly signed up for tutoring, and made her way into the tutoring hallway, stopping abruptly as someone who shouldn’t have seen her came into sight. “Oh… Hi there.” She said quietly, hoping they wouldn’t ask about her being somewhere a Blackbourne was rarely seen.

      Sometimes, when Piper was bored, a rare event that occurred not often enough to be of any worry, she let her feet do the walking––in the metaphorical sense, obviously. Clearing her mind, she wandered where the ground took her. This time, the ground took her to the tutoring center, where she leaned against the wall, the back of her head cool against the frigid glass that kept the picture inside it safe. Between her teeth, she held what looked like a red licorice twist. “Hey.” She glanced at Kaitlyn, knowing she shouldn’t be there, but at the same time, not really caring enough to make a big deal out of it. “Do you want one?” She gestured at the box of Redvines in her hand. 

You like that girl with the wild garden mind. She thew herself off a mountain and landed with flowers in her hair. She has a nomadic heart. She doesn’t care what’s going on if you say it’s going on. Because there’s something somewhere else that’s really going on and so she’s gone. You’d like to follow her for awhile. To show here where the end is and to ask if she’d like to hold hands. She’ll just smile, wave and leave you there. And she’s so beautiful. If she’d just sit still… But then you see your world’s too small to keep a girl who keeps nothing. Now if she’d just sit still… But she already knows you just put things on shelves in rows and in dark closets stacked with boxes. And there’s not enough room in your world for forests, caves and foxes. And you call it chaos in her eyes. It’s just the freedom you can’t handle. And her unconcern for what you keep near makes you see it’s just cowardice you hold dear. She’s the pet bird who flew out the window. What do you call a pet that just leaves? Guess she wasn’t a pet. And what you call desire feels like containment to her. And the two uncontaminated pennies of purity left in your heart cry out for her. But she just leaves you to curse your cheapness. You could have thrown the world away and had it all. And her threadbare abundance makes you starve in harvest season. And you’d like to hold her. But your embrace only seeks to conquer. And she twists away. You see you can’t conquer the wind. And she twists away. Sky eyed.