Page 89 of Discordant Cultivation

When you asked me to unfold.

You didn’t like what you saw in the margins;

So you banned the book,

Banned the book—”

But halfway through, something shifted. Instead of moving to the next book stack, Kieran looked down at his hands with pure disgust. He pulled the guitar over his head and began smashing it against the hardwood floor in perfect rhythm with Vale’s continued playing.

He sang while destroying his instrument, each impact landing perfectly with the beat, wood splintering and strings snapping but his voice never faltered,

“Took a torch to my collection,

Burned my sections, burned my nook,

Now I’m holding ashes, holding ashes, holding ashes—”

The repetition became obsessive, hypnotic, each shattered piece of that guitar was a piece of himself Kieran was willing to destroy for this moment—rage given physical form, fury made visible.

Vale played the soft outro, watching in awe as Kieran—eyes red-rimmed with fury and exhaustion, stumbled forward and grabbed the sides of Eliza’s camera, startling her as he pulled himself close to whisper the final lines like a man gone mad:

“Take a look, take a look, take a look,

Did you take a look?

At what’s left when the smoke clears?

Just the reader,

Just the reader...

Just the fear.”

He dropped to his knees among the wreckage of his instrument like someone whose rage had finally burned through every support structure.

“Cut!” Eliza breathed, hitting a button on her camera.

Vale moved before conscious thought engaged, ripping off the mesh mask as he reached Kieran’s side. His arms wrapped around the shaking boy, pulling him close while surveying the destruction they’d captured together.

“Perfect,” Vale whispered against Kieran’s hair, smoothing the dark strands back from his flushed face. “That was absolutely perfect.”

Kieran just stared at the remains of his guitar—strings snapped, neck cracked, wood scattered across hardwood like the aftermath of inevitable violence. His breathing was ragged, hischest heaving beneath gauze wrapping, and Vale could feel the tremors running through him.

“You were magnificent,” Vale continued, pressing a kiss to Kieran’s forehead. “Every word, every movement, every moment of rage. They’ll never question you after this.”

Eliza packed up her equipment with very little fanfare, already moving forward because that was what vultures did—they took what they could and kept flying.

Kieran’s hands clutched at Vale’s shirt as the first sob tore from his throat, and Vale wondered if his beautiful boy was seeking comfort or trying to push the architect of his breaking away. The distinction didn’t matter. He’d live inside the glass house that was Kieran and shatter him every day for the privilege of piecing him back together with bloody fingers, satisfied with the knowledge that his DNA lived in the cracks.

The guitar lay in pieces around them like a sacrifice accepted by gods who demanded blood or bone and got both wrapped in white gauze, captured in perfect 4K resolution.

26

I'm learning how to breathe poison and make it disappear…

Kieran

Neither he nor Vale recognized the clustered focal seizures at first. Kieran thought he was just too wrung out from the basement, from the song, from destroying his last lifeline to his old life. But the metal taste in his mouth wouldn’t fade, his body felt wrong, he couldn’t hold his torso up. He wasn’t going to say anything. He didn’t want to give Vale more reasons to touch him after the last lesson.