The Duke

You played all your cards on me. You cant do that. You can’t go all out on just one person.

Is there anyone else that you put in effort in, that you feel does the same?

-What?

Other people, your other friends, do they meet your expectations

-*hesitates* Yea.
-some don’t but thats my bad decisions

*He lied. He knew he’d lied. If the past few weeks were even the slightest reflection, he had lied.
He’d known it for a while now, but had not confronted it.*
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There’s a buzz you see, when you’re well and people are near. But there’s an even greater addiction to the affection of those who stick around when the skies are grey. There’s a humbling, there’s a power, and theres a strength. It’s the strength to fall back and know you’re strapped in.

Desperation. It hits when you realise you let go and fell, but nobody had tightened the buckles. Or that you’d leapt of in fact. Without a harness.

It’s the word you avoid. It’s the label for whats inside. It’s the truth that makes no sense.

How

How does everyone just …
He played his cards smart. He leapt and he fell. He got back up, picked up his cards. But them in their box, and left the box behind some old hidden books.
He learnt to laugh, differently. He learnt to talk, freely. He taught himself to live again. To experience

Months passed. Hesitantly he blew away the dust, and opened up the deck. He looked at his cards again. They still smelt of smoke, and were greyed. Memoirs of the fires they’d survived.

He took them out, and shared them. He gave one to the boy who’d waited long enough in bus lines. He gave one to the little sir who’d always laugh. Hesitantly indeed, he gave.

Grey took over the blue. Thunder rumbled. He dashed between the lightning grabbing the hands of those stranded. He hid them safe inside the barn, but had to return back out for one more. Himself.

He ran, how effortlessly he ran. Careless personified. For he was certain, that when he got to the cliff he would be strapped.

The wind flew past, but he wasn’t afraid. He awaited the sudden rebound of the harness and wires. But it never came.

He found his fear as he landed. He found what he’d kept away. He’d found the word he avoided.

Friends afar. He’d heard them talk. Talk of the ideology unknown to him. Foreign. “When you need them most, the ones who are there, are your family”

He lay there, looking up. Family. But he’d never felt that concept of family. Family. Aren’t those meant to teach you to fly and catch you when you fall. Family. Family. That’s how he’d ended up amongst the rocks. Family. They’re meant to be lifeguards, but. But, for him, they were the endless waves. Strong and tall, that’d drag him out into the deepest currents, and let him float back to collide with the rocks.

He lay there. He felt denial walk away, as did the rest. Groaning, he rolled over. He saw it in the water’s reflection. Reality approached, with its cold embrace. He saw himself, his lips opened, his tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth. For the sounds of that dreaded word, the label, the truth. Loneliness.