HAZE & GLORY

Birds sing around them, the warmth of a mild Manitoba summer simmering like a comforting, corporeal presence. Things have been calm, normal, and they’ve developed some kind of routine here in between the sporadic returns of Capella’s mother to their lifelong home he’s now somehow taken up a semi-permanent residence in. Staying in one place for too long always makes him feel so stagnant, and despite the circumstances of this particular pause in his timeline, it’s not really any better. He wonders what part of his galaxy-mind craves wide open spaces so much; craves wandering and fluidity and ever-changing environments. It’s reminiscent, he thinks, of what an addict might feel like. His body is a physical force craving something he can’t give to it, and his form of a hit might come with consequences just as bad.

Capella does not want to be someone who abandons people anymore.

Sunlight is eclipsed by a stray cloud, casting partial shadows over his countenance as he bows his head slightly, the rough wooden planks of the porch they’re sat on an uneven texture beneath his fingertips. He runs them back and forth, legs crossed, and he thinks. Thinks.

The idea of home has always been foreign, and he wouldn’t quite call this place it. Because Jared could never find home between four walls. Home isn’t made of plaster and plywood. It isn’t the place you sleep, take showers, and eat. To him, home has become who he sleeps beside, who helps him take showers when his brittle body won’t let him stand on his own two feet. And it’s weird to him, finding home within Capella. It’s weird, letting him care for him because he can’t care for himself anymore. He feels like he holds the other hostage, but there’s some form of stockholm syndrome that’s formed between them. Jared would call it holding him hostage because he knows Capella’s being begs him to leave this place they’ve found refuge in. He knows he craves change the same way he himself does. But he is weak in a way that he couldn’t push himself to give Capella what he craves, no matter how hard he tries or how much he wants to. It would kill him.

Stupidly, he still holds a cigarette between his fingers, watches the smoke billow from the end, dissipate into the open air. One of many bad habits he can’t kick and will probably carry to his grave. He presses the filter to his lips and happily breathes in the toxins.