𝐀𝐍𝐘𝐓𝐎𝐖𝐍, ⁽ᵘˢᵃ⁾

fuck out my way when u see me . i'm rolling with the LGBT

“      you think if we plead,    he’s jus’ what?     gonna take ‘em away?    ”      he scoffs,     own faith waning with each passing day.       arvin had started to think that the farmer’s daughter beth greene appeared to act as a painful homage to lenora,      an ode to pure innocence among the destitute.        [ even as lenora’s baby sprouted no bigger than a pea,     she remained just as pious as she had ever been,      even though loving the preacher back at knockemstiff had turned her unholy. ]     love had always been to arvin a rather strange thing:      in his short lifetime,      he’d watched it make people commit all acts of sin,       but as long as they had begun to pray for them by the chime of the morning church bells,      all would be forgiven.         but on the other hand,      he had watched as their almighty had turned his back on those most kind:         cancer took his mother first,     slowly and painfully as though it were just,     and then a certain loneliness took his lenora second,      though he thought her the most interesting person he knew.       there was nothing rational about death,     arvin concluded,       and soon was it to be confirmed when he witnessed the dead get up and walk at same speed.       a dry cigarette parts lips at the middle,      finding anything to occupy his mouth and mend his break in concentration.

        “       if this is a testin’ of faith then you’re sure to go to heaven,     beth greene.      you’re to sprout wings any day,     i bet.     ”

“               my dad says they’ll be working on  a cure  somewhere.     ”        at the end of the world,   faith was all you had left.   death had taken your mother into it’s clutches,      threatened to rip her away from you forever.     you would pray every day,   would pray until your knees bled and your palms ached,  until your voice is hoarse from the begging that made its way through your tears.   you and god were alone together now;  the certain loneliness you carried with you would be with you for the rest of your life.      you always imagined the end times as something apocalyptic,   where the sky blossoms into a particular shade of vermillion and the night sky is void of stars.    instead,     the earth was still,   and no prayers had been answered;     as if you were completely,   and utterly alone.      you try not to ponder too long on the meaningless days that pass now,       how you are clutching at the words written in a book held too close to your chest.      days spent outside,    back against the barn to feel closer to the dead.      you were still in denial about what was out there,    shielded from the absolute worst of it;        but the building groans beneath the weight of bodies,    and you worried it would not stand long enough for a savior to appear.        there is a dialogue between the living and the dead and if there is not a misunderstanding, it is silence,   it is defeaning.   to accept that faith would not be enough would rock your entire existence:             and you were not sure how to live without it.

  STEVEN C.    *   [  @thesuburbia​​​​​  ]  :   it’s not how much it hurts. it’s how much you think it’ll hurt.

   “   isn't  it  kinda  the  same  thing?  ”    despite  the  heavy  feeling  in  the  tightly  wound  chest,  lips  twitched  into  a  smile.  steve,  always  THE  RATIONAL  ONE.  the  older  brother.  as  time  went  by,  he  grew  into  that  habit:  the  one  of  saying  things  that  sound  vaguely  comforting  but  aren't  actually  kind  at  all.  she  assumed  it  was  the  way  he  had  of  showing  he  cared  enough  to  try.  she  looked  down  at  her  fingers,  unsure  if  the  path  was  safe  for  treading.

“  —  do  you  think  he'll  come?   ”    BOLD  OF  HER  TO  ASK,  she  knew,  for  steven’s  honesty  could  be  brutal  at  times.  but  then,  wasn’t  it  what  she  needed?      “   he  was  doing  good,  last  i  heard  of  him…  it's  important  to  me  that  he's  here.  he’s  gotta  know  that  —  right? ”

you had all lost someone       so dear to you all,  and since then,  all life had been dimmed,  the color drained from reality.    all moved on from that moment at the house all those years before,    you believed you had moved on more than they had:    so rooted in the truth that they had been too young to see   (or you too old to admit).       the house became a graveyard of memories,   ones that you did not want to return to,  and so you shut it out,    moved on.     and now it’s a wedding,  and you were not about to let past hauntings sink its claws into the day.       if luke showed,   you weren’t so sure it was going to cause anything good.   his face may bring her ease,    but his actions, you believed,   would bring anything but.

@thesuburbia ㅤ ㅤ ››› ㅤ ㅤ nonverbal prompts:     patching my muse up after they got hurt ㅤ .

it wasn’t unusual to find the two of them were caught up in moments of such latent,     inarguable intimacy,       though it had been disastrously more common to find finn in the patient’s position.        and isaiah finds himself startlingly relaxed under the careful tending of another,       having only ever fixed himself the moment he could ball his hands into fists and make people hurt the way he did.       as isaiah could recall,      their childhood had been a long,      desperate wish to be older,        forcing their malnourished limbs through the arms of expensive coats that practically drowned them,        in hopes they one day could fill the shoes of deities among men,       astride those of whom had strangers kneel for them as they passed by.        a wish fulfilled,      and they still remained perpetually dissatisfied:       as though there were more godliness to be gained.       so the drugs ate away their boredom,      the booze too,      until the morning took over the night and they’d wake to their malcontent and begin again.        every single day spent together and it felt nothing close to enough,      taking girls into the back offices as though any of it had even a minuscule amount of meaning behind it.         isaiah longs to be able to recognise what was missing from it all.        dark pupils find themselves trained on the striations of finn’s forearms as he tends to flesh wound rather meticulously.      a dramatisation,       perhaps,      of what resides upon his skin:        isaiah didn’t think it needing of this much attention.       though,     he had consumed far more of the alcohol than initially prescribed,     and his body was succumbing to an almost paralysis:        the pain practically gone,       and the presence of an old friend all the more recognised in their proximity.

“      who knows,       in another life,       what could have been?     ”      an airiness soon accompanies whiskey-taste as it is siphoned from the bottle,       the coarseness turning smooth as the briny flavour loses it’s complexity the more it’s ingested.      and for a moment,       he’s numb to all sense.       he finds his face as candlelight burns beside them.          isaiah,    then,     is looking at finn moderately the way he looks at girls in the garrison,        with an air of attractive arrogance utterly mystified by the intensity of hard,     speckled green irises.      one might describe that peering into them feels vaguely like getting lost among the sticks,       shades of sage and fawn resembling that of the trees.       a desensitised playfulness toys with the corners of his mouth,      pushing a cavern deep into the apple of his bronze cheek.          “    doctor finn shelby.      imagine that.     ”

the wars that had been waged beneath bloody knuckles and the remnants of gunpowder that still lingered on skin, forever encapsulating the pain and the rage that had only grown inside the cavity of chest. it was all you had ever known,   the childhood games you played in the shadows of older brothers,   actions being mirrored when no one was watching.    the taste of copper was not foreign to your tongue,    alcohol soaked rags pushed against wounds created from own boredom,     chasing shadows down alleys in order to feel something.        as if a thursday confessional,       the confessions of your sins being chased down with the burn of liquor,     trace of white powder still engrained on the wood.       used to these situations,     normally yourself under the scrutiny of watchful eyes,    the neck of the bottle being your very savior.       [the first bullet to pierce skin kept;]       as if a memorial to the boy you were before.       it seemed strange now,    how easily you would bleed beneath the knuckles of another,    own weapon providing the glint of metal in the moonlight before upper hand was given.    the blade became your legacy,      the man stepped into the light unrecognisable to others.            it was always isaiah by your side,        learned how to bandage wounds under the intoxicated gaze given to your own,     chasing any sense of rush similiar to that of fists against skull,    the raw rage that would grow under your skin,   overtaking the senses.         you had yearned for that power your whole life,      watched as brothers rose among the ranks and fit perfectly into the new lifestyle offered to them.     you never quite fit,    always malnourished limbs playing make believe night after night.