A-Rose-In-Misery

I held strong for you, Right down to the last minute, Right down to the floor, Just in time, and you Didn't realise that I'd saved you. In actual fact. In a split-second. I stalked through piles of discarded fabric, Fabricated snakes of rope Strewn across the floor. I carried you through darkness, through blackness And under spotlights. To me, at the time, it all seemed too much, To you, nothing. There was a whisper in the air, A whisper of forgotten bodies, Fading in a histrionic flash of something called 'Fame'. Costumes, laid like corpses beneath My stampeding feet, and your Shadow. There were dust-motes in the air and

Butterflies in my stomach, Battering their ripped wings to escape, And it's when they break free of their prison, That I have to pull my hair back from my face, Ready for that all-too-familiar sensation. Butterflies in my limbs, I feel their movement as I walk, One cautious step at a time, Shaking on my ungainly legs, My hands falling idle by my thighs. Butterflies in my mind, Clouding my train of thought, Tricking me with sweet lyrical detours, So much so that I feel lost, Lost between what is real and what is not. Butterflies in my eyes, Blurring my vision with more than salty tears, Draping a hazy grey mist over the world,

Leonora Abbott. Leonora Abbott. It's the kind of name that one would automatically attach to a woman, perhaps in her mid to late twenties, who has somehow climbed her way up to high society, through social class and good breeding. Perhaps this woman has a pale, oval face that is perfectly formed, framed, maybe, with fragile russet-coloured curls that accentuate the colour of her eyes which seem to sparkle with a million shades of cobalt blue - no, not blue, green, much more suitable for her colouring. She wears dresses of fine opalescent silks and satins, with diamonds, not rubies for they would go against her hair colour and, more than anyth

CHAPTER 12 BEGIN TO END Allegra It rained all week, the week it took for me to return to England. I had taken half of the money Captain Fletcher had given Roselyn and I had managed to get the first ship I could which was bound for the other side of the channel. The days passed by me in a blurry haze as I sat in my cabin with my chin resting on my knees. It had been good while it had lasted. I had had two brilliant friends in Roselyn and Gabriel and I had been happy, I realised, happier than I had ever been in the years I had lived at the house on Lyon Close. I managed not to think of James for the entire journey and stepped of at Bristol w