Before It's Voiced

Poetry

S/o to chaotic-panda for beta'ing <3

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po·et·ry

noun

literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm

That night, there's only one more chapter left. That night, Pete feels his words begin to dwindle.

That night, Pete can't decide between a sad or happy ending.

He'd told Patrick about his mother, about how her hands shake from age and how her lungs hurt from the city apartment she's cooped herself in. He'd told him about his sister, about the broken bones and stitched-up skin his mother had described. He told him about his brother, about how he's been gone more days this year than he'd been home and how he's younger but still manages to make Pete feel so small.

He'd spilled every busted word from his throat, bleeding it into the air as if the poison might finally slip out. He'd barely had time to breathe from how quickly he found himself venting.

And Patrick had listened to every syllable Pete uttered. His unblinking gaze and partially parted lips were more than enough to drown out the cacophony in Pete's mind— one that wasn't solely created by the creatures within.

Pete had told everything— everything but his own near encounters with death and pain, a story he's shared too many times to count— and Patrick, for once, had nothing to say in return. No tales about his own parents— parents that sang and danced and raced him around the castle, Pete's heard him say before. No details about his own brother and sister— older and stronger, bullies one day but best friends the next, the only two in the world who ever shared the exact same smile as him. No discussion on friends or strangers or acquaintances. Nothing Patrick usually likes to say.

Just a nod, as soft as the words were hard to speak. Just a hand over Pete's— one shaking and one steady, a reversal of roles for just one moment.

Just Patrick's whisper, the only time he spoke.

"They're your family and you can't help missing them," he'd said. "Just don't forget they're lucky to have you, too."

Lucky. Twice, Patrick's used that word for him. Pete could ponder on the meaning for hours.

Instead, as dawn awakes, he takes his time to scrawl it across a blank piece of paper.

Lucky

A title for a book without an ending. A summary but also a lie.

He feels crazy but, really, the crazy thing's this: the situation's only crazy while Pete's writing it.

And the story's only sane if Pete reads it over in Patrick's presence.

Writing is too much like reality and Pete is reminded with every twist of his pen, every tap on the typewriter keys, that he is an author of truth, of fact. He has bled verisimilitude in ways others laugh out lies, fables and tales meant to dazzle eyes and create idols in place of thoughts. Books meant for silver screens and manic dreams.

Pete's words were only ever meant to be screamed, not recited— hidden, never performed. Don't the readers know they're feasting on death? Don't the hot shot producers and actors know they're staging a funeral pyre?

Vultures, the lot of them.

So, it goes, his writing only feels insane when he writes of sirens and mythical voices in his head. He wonders what metaphors they'll pull from this, what theories they'll create. Don't tap on the glass of my skull, he thinks. Monsters live inside.