Your limbs are heavy, or they feel that anyway, they don’t press too deeply into the mattress. Your eyes also can’t seem to escape the ceiling, the soft lines in the clouds. You’re familiar with the feeling, intimate, even. You’d say the word out loud, the tongue tapping the back of the teeth; lips pursing outwards, keeping apart as the teeth press back together as the word is carried forward on your breath like your wings in the wind. You know what it is, don’t even pretend that you don’t, not like you do when you leave the room...
The room, solitude and a pot, to stew you. Always so proudful; so assured of yourself when you leave it, but that’s not the real you, is it? When your eyes do leave that ceiling, your cheek falling onto your pillow, your eyes connect immediately to the poster on the wall. The wonderbolts you think, the normally bright colours appearing grey. You always thought to yourself that if you were them things would be better, but that thought is always in your head. If only I were Spitfire, or if only I was Daring Doo. Your days are of faux pride or longing to be someone, anyone, else. You know this, you know all of this, yet you allow yourself to be stirred in it. Like broth. You’re not perfect though, sometimes, on an odd day, your wings would feel heavier than usual or your gait slowed. Almost as if you were about to fall from the sky...
On those days you accidentally wore it. Unlike your other things, you don’t draw attention to it, it just lays idly there; unseen like a piece of trash. Your friends are just like you, aren’t they? Pretending. You don’t know what, but at the same time, you do. Grimacing faces, forced smiles, dialogue with masks. You, you see it, you swore to yourself. They tolerate you, you know it, you’ve always known it. You know it, not I, I would never lie to you or tell you what you didn’t want to hear. You know what’s best but I encourage you, nothing more. Your only friend, your only real friend.
You sniffle. Your eyes move to the nightstand, the drifting of the pupil sending a thorn spike of pain into your skull. The clock. Oh, the hours have gone by faster than even you, haven’t they? You stir, sniffing back snot. Disgusting. Your limbs, only now do you realise, ache with an almost arthritic pain. You’ve been quite still for hours; the dust nearly settled on your open eye, one might have mistaken you for dead… dead? Oh, you don’t like that word, do you? You don’t like what’s attached to it, I understand, only think of it when you want to.
You climb out of bed, your mouth tasting of bad breath and phlegm, it’s been awhile since you’ve brushed your teeth. Disgusting. Your room is messy. Uniforms, magazines and discarded soda cans were strewn about like autumn leaves on the ground. Disgusting. You cringe, another sniffle from your muzzle, and you carry on. That’s what you do with most of your messes, you carry on, stepping over them like faeces on the pavement; leaving your bedroom and stepping out into the hall...
I’m still here, by the way, that’s okay. I can keep you company a little while longer, what else are friends for? You grit your teeth, trying to push me away. I’m trying to help you, it’s fine, it’s fine. You relent, wiping your muzzle with the back of your hoof. You feel a wetness on your cheek. You ignore it, pretending some rain had fallen from your ceiling. It’ll wash away in the shower, you feebly assure yourself. Your steps are a slog, each time the hoof fell it felt heavy. You feel heavy. You make your way to the shower, standing under the running water without closing the curtain, what was the point? You leave the bathroom, your mane still soaking, patches of wet fur all over you. You walk down the stairs, ignoring the pictures on the wall, shrinking under their eyes as you reached the bottom. You make your way to the kitchen, you open the fridge, staring at it for several minutes gormless. After a while you finally close it, pressing a hoof into it as you stared at the floor, waiting. You try to keep your head empty, but a word comes back into your head, you couldn’t help it, not after having it said so soon ago. Dead, you thought. Each time you repeat it feels like a stab in the gut, images of indifference, ambivalence and sometimes even relief flood your head…
I left the kitchen, my eyes were only focused on the door. I needed to get out. Out, I thought to myself, out. I pulled open the door and I took some steps away from it, I realised I hadn’t bothered to close it… it didn’t matter. As I reached the edge of my house, the horizon stretching out into forever, the entire world beneath me; the clouds drifting on by me, I realised I felt like I weighed a ton today. I unfurled my wings and pushed myself from the cloud, flapping them as I took to the air. I kept flying up for some reason, high, higher than I should. My wings are heavy, I thought to myself again as they continued to carry me into the air. It felt gone, but the feeling it always gave me continued to linger like a parasite. Dead, I thought to myself. This was the loudest the word ever sounded, and it continued to ring in my head as I continued to climb. My wings, they got heavier and heavier, until they felt like cinder blocks tied to my body. They stop flapping, uncommanded, then I fall… it’ll be alright, I’ll start flapping them again, I will… I will…
I will...
