Straitjacket, Poetry in Motion

Straitjacket, Poetry in Motion: To Descend

Chapter Three: To Descend

- this is not -

My name is Jessica Leigh, and you think I'm the victim here. You may be right. But it was partly my fault, too. All of it. David... Mother ... even that boy.

One by one, I poison. I killed them all. My love is a curse after all.

I had a bag. A backpack, deep indigo. David had bought it  for me. And I had stitched words onto it. Pink letters spelling our names and tying them together. Such a simple act, but it meant the world to me, as if I would carry him with me forever. As if we would always be with one another.

Do you know? What it feels like to know you're in love, know that the world can be conquered?

Do you know?

David. He had first kissed her by the sea. A romantic first kiss, don't you think? Picture perfect.

They were the 'it' couple. Boys loved her, girls loved David.

Girls tried so hard to steal David off her, one even kissed him. She saw it and cried.

He'd proposed that day.

The ring screamed priceless left and right. He looks so nervous, down on one knee with his fringe covering his eyes; something he'd never done before. Her breath catches and everything suddenly seems to slow down. There is only his heavy breathing and her lips moving soundlessly.

It took some time, but she had accepted.

David promises to take her around the world, but has to start with the city.

She didn't know what she had done wrong.

Maybe it had been her purse, the diamond ring that flashed all the more brightly amidst the glow of the neon signs on her finger as she gestures.

One second, she is holding David's hand and telling him about their future together. The next, David is shoving her away from him, shouting something that she can't comprehend.

It's not until many years later that she realises he is screaming at her to run.

And now there is sound.

Like a knife slicing through fruit.

Only, it isn't fruit.

She watches, shell-shocked, as the blood flies up in a bright spray and splatters all over her. And there is something running through her head, repeating like a mantra that wouldn't go away.

Don'tdieDon'tdieDon'tdie.

David stumbles forward, arms reaching for her, and she envelops him in a deep embrace, wishing that she could have the ability to take his pain away. The blood is squished between their bodies and when she opens her mouth to cry, to scream, to tell him everything was going to be all right, the red flows into her parted lips and seals them shut.

His voice is so faint when he speaks, as if it's coming from a very, very long distance.

She swallows the blood, his blood, and puts a finger to his mouth. She tells him not to cry, even as she fights to choke back her own tears.

But he smiles, and for a second, she thinks that everything was really going to be fine and that if he could keep on smiling, then everything would work itself out.

He coughs and she sags against the brick wall, his weight resting solely on her. And her heart drops into her stomach, and the blood is everywhere.