To be free is to breathe. It is the air in your lungs, the rush of wind through your hair. Freedom is open eyes and beating hearts, wings for flight and a will to fight. Freedom is a word to describe something almost impossible to find. Freedom is accepting life and living and breathing, your soul pulsing and your wings beating.
Freedom is something I failed to grasp, with my dark eyes blind and my heart standing still. My wings were frozen, my soul had fallen and I didn't know where it landed. I'd been pacing back and forth in my cage for days, staring at my wrists. I considered using my knife once, sliding down the river and letting the waves spill over the sides but the same thought always entered my mind; what if it doesn't work? What if they find me, bloody and broken, but still living? They'd only make the cage smaller and send me more guards.
I fell back on my bed. It wasn't like a prison bed. I had covers and a proper mattress, pillows and sheets, but to me the bed was nothing but straw, scratching and poking my skin. Nothing here ever hurt me but that made no difference. I was already broken.
I think the sky fell when I first came here. After my mother tried to be a hero and ended up dying for it. Shot in a bank robbery. Never said goodbye.
About five hours earlier, we had a fight. I went for a joyride in her car the previous night, wrecking up the front pretty good as rebellious teenagers often do. She yelled, my short-temper acted up and I told her to "F-off" only I wasn't exactly considerate enough to censor myself that time. She went to work at the bank angry and never came back.
My dad's a deadbeat. Left when I was born and never tried to see me. Not much of a story there. But you know what? Maybe I deserve all this. Maybe I'm just such a horrible person that I've been trapped in my own personal Hell. Stuck here in a cage, or what the others like to call "a foster home". A place for messed-up teens like me.
They lock the doors at night.
I sat hidden under the stairs. It was quiet there in the basement, silent, dark, welcoming but haunting. Like the demons wanted me there so they could watch over me from the shadows, red eyes blazing, ready to take me at any moment.
My eyes were closed. I had no need for sight here in the darkness, so I kept the world shut out as I focussed on nothing, feeling the dark, becoming the dark, seeing, hearing, breathing in nothing. Nothing at all.
I took a breath and opened my eyes suddenly, feeling like something was different. There was footsteps. I heard footsteps. The quiet tap-tapping of someone pacing, back and forth. Nearer then farther then nearer again.
Curious, I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the gloom, and slowly, silently, crawled out from under the stairs.
Then I saw him.
He was pacing, but it was weird, like there was something inside him he wanted to get out. His steps were frantic and unpredictable. He stumbled, staggered, shuffled his way back and forth, one hand to his head, grabbing his scruffy black hair, the other clenching and unclenching as a fist. His face was a grimace and there was a wild, tortured look in his eyes. He looked like he'd gone mad.
Perhaps he had.
I got up slowly, taking a step over when he spun around on his heel, staring right at me, right in my eyes, right into my soul. I'll never forget that look, I swear, I never will. It was a look of torture, of panic, of sorrow and anger. He looked at me, right at me, and said in a rough, pained voice "Help me."
And I blinked, I stared, I tilted my head. "With what?" I asked, the sound of my own hoarse, underused voice shocking me slightly.
He looked at me again and shook his head. "Help me..." He repeated and started pacing again. "Help...."
I didn't know what to do, nor did I know why he needed help so I just stood there a moment, watching him.
"No." He was saying. "No, no, no, no.... I won't... can't... dead... fire... please, no more..."
My eyes widened. I knew what was wrong, and there was nothing I could do about it. I ran over to him, placing my hand on his shoulder which stopped his pacing but not his torture. His expression changed from pained to worried. Like some sort of haunting dread was sneaking up on him.
"I told them no... made me... I'm sorry, so sorry...." There were tears in his eyes but there was nothing I could do to stop them from falling. I slid my hand down his arm to his hand, which I took. Slowly, carefully, I lead him up the stairs.
"Sorry... sorry... sorry...." He kept muttering, shaking slightly. His hand was cold, like a corpse. I wondered if my hands felt the same.
When the foster parents took him, I thought I'd never see him again. That they'd realized his madness and instead of helping him, like I wanted, they'd disposed of him. Dropped him off in an "unwanted-teen" dumpster, never to be seen again. Thrown out like so many before him.
But he was back in two days, a bottle of pills rattling in his unsteady hand. I knew they had to monitor him, help (force) him to recover, but I also knew they couldn't keep me away.
That night I'd picked my door open with a pin and found him down the hall. I'd picked his door open as well, worried at how that might fly, but he just seemed happy to see me. The madness was fading. His thoughts seemed to be clearing because when he saw me he smiled. An actual, true, honest smile.
And I must say, I had to smile back.
We sat in his room the whole night but we barely talked. He didn't seem to like talking. For some reason everything reminded him of some horrible past memory of fire and death. The voices must have told him to do something horrible involving fire, something that ended him up here.
And I never got his name, and he never got mine. But personally, I don't think people need names. Names are only given to things that are easy to forget without a word to call it. People don't need names because when you meet the right one, you'll never forget who they are.
All we really did that night was think to each other, become closer without the use of words. We had similar minds. That was something we could know without words, without giving out our bleak pasts, without giving names or likes and dislikes. We didn't need to speak.
We held hands, gazing out the window, losing ourselves in the stars. Linked forever with just a simple touch, each of us seeing through each other's eyes, gazes locked.
When the dawn came, I snuck back to my room, an odd feeling overcoming me, like I had been chained but now the chains had rusted through, unbinding me, letting out my limbs and opening my eyes.
For weeks, we shared each other's thoughts, joining souls and locking gazes. Every time he started mumbling, every time I felt like dying, we had each other.
I found my heart was beating again.
And one day, there was a knock at my door. I sat up, drifting slowly back to Earth and striding to the door. I opened it and there he was, smiling brightly, making me smile back.
And in his hand was a dandelion.
The only thing that ever grows outside. He must have picked it during lunch, when they let us out.
It was faded, turning white and fluffy, but there was still some yellow left on it. The stem was broken and the leaves were ragged but I swear, I swear that was the most beautiful flower I'd ever seen in my life. Period.
He took a step closer to me, holding the dandelion in front of him with both hands clasped around the stem. He looked right into my eyes, right into my soul and said; "Fire."
"There's no fire." I said, trying to reassure him.
But he shook his head. "Fire." He insisted, eyes still locked on mine. He leaned closer.
That was when I understood. I clasped my hands over his, the dandelion held firmly by us both. Leaning closer, I closed my eyes and he closed his as we got closer and closer until-
-Until our lips touched and the fire blazed all around us, consuming our souls.
As the kiss finished, we walked into my room, closing the door gently behind us. It was in that moment that I knew, I truly knew;
I was free.
Freedom is to breathe, something I had forgotten.
He taught me how.
