we keep these promises, write it in a letter

[Maraoone]

((Joanne pushed herself up.))

She had tripped on a root, and she guessed it was just her luck that the root hadn't started to swallow her. Maybe in due time.

Her forehead pulsated, like the trees, except not. It was different. It felt more physical, more internal. More aggressive. It felt warm, too.

That energy that had coursed through her just moments earlier was out of grasp, unharnessed. So, she fell onto her back with a thud.

Her hand went to her forehead, and she noticed that it left little trails in the air. The trails didn't calm her, but it was calming to look at them, if that made sense. Not like anything else made sense right now, but that was par for the course for the past few hours.

She waggled her fingers in front of her with her other hand, her signature wave, but different, with lines bobbing up and down, following her fingers as they waved to and fro. As if she were saying hi or bye, the difference didn't matter, to the trees above. Greeting them. They could come get her now.

And so, for a moment, or moments, she just laid there, flat on her back, one hand on her forehead, taking in the warm, the internal, the aggressive, and the other hand greeting hellos and goodbyes to the breathing foliage, waiting. Even the leaves seemed to leave trails, she noted. But they no longer seemed to close into her. The world didn't seem to be coming after her, anymore. The world just was. The world just was, and Joanne just was, and that was good. After the chaos, the blur of the past few hours, this felt nice. She felt at peace for the first time in a long, long while.

Her hand fell from the sky to her face, at one point, and all of a sudden, her surroundings had darkened. She worried it had been the darkening from earlier, coming back to take her. If not the roots, then the shadows themselves would take her. Then, she removed her hand from her face, and things still seemed dim, but naturally so. She removed her other hand from her forehead, waggled it, and the tracers that followed were rusty. She took a closer look at her hand, and pulled the fingers together and apart, and they felt sticky.

Her hand was bloody.

She put her hand on her forehead, and that too was sticky. Red flakes fell off from her as she removed her hand again. It wasn't bleeding, anymore, but it had been at one point.

So it didn't matter anymore. The wound had healed.

She had never bled this much before, but she didn't feel worried. She didn't feel panicked. She didn't feel anything but okay.

The trees above had turned from enemies to companions, watching over her as she healed. The world seemed to come together.

It felt familiar.

She had felt this before

It felt like



A friend, she didn't care to remember the name right now, had seen past Joanne, at a party. Mom and Dad had been fighting right before she left, she hadn't been able to hide it from Tanka and Rudo. They heard every word, they had looked so scared. And she had just run away. And she was supposed to take care of them, she was supposed to make the world as innocent and care-free as it had been for her. They deserved what she had had, at one point. And they didn't have that right now, and she was supposed to do that, but she had just run away from it, because she couldn't bear to hear another fucking second of Mom calling Dad a deadbeat, Dad calling Mom a whore, and so and so forth, ad infinitum.

She had run away to her fourth party in as many days. And said unnamed friend had seen past her, saw the tensed shoulders and stares into space, heard the too-long spaces between question and answer, the slight shakiness, waviness in her words, as if any further bit of pressure would cause her vocal cords to give way. The friend had seen past Joanne, and had seen something that was not Joanne, as far as Joanne was concerned. The friend saw this, and offered salvation in the form of a few pills.

She didn't know why she had done it, even with everything on her mind. She just knew that she had done it. And things had felt alright for a few hours after that. Everything had fallen into place. Things didn't matter as much. She'd get past this, eventually, one way or another. She had enjoyed the evening, for once.



it felt like that.

Joanne hadn't done anything unsavory that night, but after it wore off, she found herself wanting, wanting for it, more than she had for anything in the longest time. And she saw how quickly other things, food, alcohol, had settled themselves into her wallet, her parties, her life, how they had refused to let go, how they had become ever-present. And then she looked back to the pills, and that terrified her.

So, she never looked back. Her head had been pulled to the side every now and then, that calmness, that satisfaction beckoning, but she had never looked back. Until now.

They had seen all this, then. Tanks, Roodz, Mom, Dad. They had seen her fall. They had seen her scream. She had tried her best to be above all that, and she failed.

It hadn't been her fault. At least, not that she remembered. Maybe it'd come to her when this wore off. It hadn't been her fault, but she still failed. She hadn't set an example.

But, there was a thought, right there. 'When this wore off.' And, she remembered, the Xanax hadn't been permanent. The calmness had gone away, things stopped being okay, after a while. Like always. But that meant that this too would pass. The trees breathing, swallowing, taking in. The panic. The darkening.

The falling had passed, after all. So that meant she still had time. Time to do something.

She laid down on the ground, taking in the raindrops. The pitpat felt funny, like her mom tapping her on the forehead, playing a little game with her. She would tap her to wake her up from her naps, back when she was a little kid. It tickled, a bit. She giggled at the sensation. She blocked the rain from her eyes with her hand, and waggled her fingers again, eyes focused on the tracers. That would pass too, sadly. But, not yet. Things felt good, finally. Things were silly, yeah, but it would pass. What it would pass into didn't matter at the moment, but it was enough to know that it would pass, and maybe a better thing or two awaited her somewhere. She still had Adele, Tanisha, the whole island out there waiting for her. Things would pass, things would be okay.

((Joanne Coleman continues in Sleep Is The Cousin Of Death))