it has been a long while since she's been here last, and yet the path is easy. the dark has crept over the canopy in the time it's taken her to climb up, and she is alone alongside the fare-off roar of a river. robins call in the treetops, and somewhere a bullfrog has begun its low call.
she stands atop her father's bones, in a place she never really knew. soon, this place will become harder to find, and bones will fade and none will visit here. Grayday, and all the others she knew and loved so fiercely will themselves fade from stories, from memory and then all together. some fade more quickly than others, those who never truly lived - her stillborns, already, leave no mortal trace to show they even existed.
it is shame that has kept her from her father's grave. each time, avoided, for fear that she will come to bring nothing but guilt, burdens and disappointment to his grave. and yet she stands here now, not because of her precarious reconciliation with Aditya, her brother, nor the birth of her young. it is the simple knowledge that she is living, for herself, her children, and while so much of what she'd had and who she'd been has been stripped away - no, despite that, she thinks Grayday would be proud all the same. besides, she has a lot more living to do before her bones come to lay in the earth.
she has known grief like the sharp edge of a knife. it has cut and carved away so much of her, and yet here she is; alive, and able to love, and able to forgive. and she can not cast away the past, but nor does it need to shape her.
she does not speak to her father. she does not know where his spirit is, now, save that she carries some piece of it with her. she realizes that only now has she truly come to terms with his death and all that followed, the unanswered questions he left behind. and so she remains only until the sky is fully suffused with night, and all around the dark begins to sing with life. and then she's gone, not absolved, not guilt-free, not without her burdens. and yet, alive.
she stands atop her father's bones, in a place she never really knew. soon, this place will become harder to find, and bones will fade and none will visit here. Grayday, and all the others she knew and loved so fiercely will themselves fade from stories, from memory and then all together. some fade more quickly than others, those who never truly lived - her stillborns, already, leave no mortal trace to show they even existed.
it is shame that has kept her from her father's grave. each time, avoided, for fear that she will come to bring nothing but guilt, burdens and disappointment to his grave. and yet she stands here now, not because of her precarious reconciliation with Aditya, her brother, nor the birth of her young. it is the simple knowledge that she is living, for herself, her children, and while so much of what she'd had and who she'd been has been stripped away - no, despite that, she thinks Grayday would be proud all the same. besides, she has a lot more living to do before her bones come to lay in the earth.
she has known grief like the sharp edge of a knife. it has cut and carved away so much of her, and yet here she is; alive, and able to love, and able to forgive. and she can not cast away the past, but nor does it need to shape her.
she does not speak to her father. she does not know where his spirit is, now, save that she carries some piece of it with her. she realizes that only now has she truly come to terms with his death and all that followed, the unanswered questions he left behind. and so she remains only until the sky is fully suffused with night, and all around the dark begins to sing with life. and then she's gone, not absolved, not guilt-free, not without her burdens. and yet, alive.
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