then time melts

[she's sixteen when she realizes her life is a disaster]

0

There's a moment, after she loses herself in his lemon hair, and dirt-stained lips. There's a constant wall between them, no matter how many times she closes the distance between them, no matter how many times she comes back, planning to devour his soul with her lips.

But there was no soul to devour, no life to bring back to. The book thief is kissing the lips of a dead little boy, and I am the only one to witness this tragedy.

I hate to intrude on scenes like this. She seems to wake herself up from her tear-streaked trance, and trembles like an infant. The survivors take her away.

She lives. She goes through the motions of life, and keeps looking back. I want to warn her that if she kept looking back, someone might turn into dust, into salt, and return to the earth that held her loved ones captive.

She doesn't understand, she doesn't listen. She wants to return, so badly, to the street named after heaven.

I cannot allow that, for her life is to be lived somewhere else. She moves far, far, far away from the ruins of Germany, and ends up in the white-hot coast of Sydney.

1.3

She's sixteen when she arrives, and takes her residence in a ransacked apartment. She goes to school, does her work, and lives her life in the most monotonous way possible. It's not her style, but she's forcing herself to find a foothold in a new world, and it's not happening.

Nothing happens until she visits the library for the first time. She cries. Her fingerprints stain each spine, the colors and text tantalizing to her eyes. She finds solace.

It's not the same thing as silence, or peace.

What she finds is hope.

4.09

She's haunted by ghosts.

I find this ironic.

6.6

She meets a boy today, and almost has a heart attack. She sees her best friend's shadow.

The boy tilts his head to the side, and asks her if she's okay.

She shakes her head, and starts to cry.

Her father had silver eyes.

8.4

She's twenty-four, and she's still in love with a dead boy. She lives with a live boy, now. His hair is the color of wheat, and his eyes are the color of wicked diamonds. They're silver, they're blue, and they just make her cry, cry, cry.

He doesn't understand her tears, but wipes them away anyways. He whispers his undying love, and tells her that everything is going to be okay.

He's right about that. Everything will turn out all right for the little book thief, and one day, we'll finally meet.

She'll be dead, but she'll be alive. Through death, she will find what she was looking for.

Answers.

11.11

The sky is the color of rockets, and fireworks. There is a myriad of stars, clashing with the neon flames, and the book thief meets me under the moon.

She smiles.

"Could you understand it?"

I don't see an elderly woman, with grandchildren, and children, and white hair.

I see the little girl I saw on the train, crying for her dead brother.

I see the girl who gave the birdman a reason to live.

I see the girl who nightmared, instead of dreamed.

I see Liesel Meminger, and tell her what I know to be the truth.

try again?

"I am haunted by humans."