&&Stitch these wounds;; {Ezra

[daisy elizabeth lipenowski]

&& Stitch these wounds with me tonight;;

Daisy sat in one of the chairs in the main lodge, a black photo album laid open on her lap. Her delicate fingers flipped through the pages, tears threatening to fall from her eyes. The room was empty, except for, of course, her self. The only thing keeping the girl company was the warmth of the crackling fire. Happy faces filled the spaces. Why couldn’t we stay like that? All of us. Was it that hard to stay sober? That’s what children do to you. They make you miserable, unhappy beings who self-destruct and damage everything around them. Yep. That was all her fault. Thinking back to the times where she actually had people that she could call parents made her blame herself even more for the way everything played out.

The girl was tempted. The red-hot flames of the fireplace seemed to call her in. She desperately wanted to burn away her past, erase everything that has ever happened to her in her sorry, miserable life. Daisy peeled a picture off of the page and slid off of the chair to kneel by the fire. Slowly, she extended her arm and lowered it into the jumping flames. The heat nipped at her skin. She was smiling on the inside as she watched the faces blacken and then shrivel up. Daisy could hear her father’s screams as her mind flashed back. She could see the pure terror in his eyes and hear him pleading for his life. If only she had delivered that one last blow, her pain and suffering would cease to exist.

From the outside in, the memories of her past seemed to flake away and the pressure lifted in the slightest. It gave her that twinge of hope that she needed to pull through everything. She wasn’t going back to that sad excuse of a home, ever.

[ezra lewis friedkin]

If crushes were easy then they would be relationships right. Well for Ezra nothing in life was right. He felt lost and confused most of the time. He knew that if he were to attempt anything, it would feel as if it was going to fall apart as normal. He sighed as he walked towards the main lodge. He had just gotten finished with wood chopping and some fence rebuilding. It was true that the counselors destroyed the fences over the night to make the kids work for something else. There had to be child labor laws right.

So here he was walking into the main lodge, when he saw her by the fire. He hadn't talked to her much since she had gotten back from her mother's funeral. He felt bad about it, other then the fact that they had gone to the morp together in a way, he felt like he could do something else for her.

Ezra watched as a photo as of the girl's father went into the fire, he didn't know what she was doing, but he felt like he needed to stop her. "Daisy, what are you doing?" He asked as he came over and looked at her. He was about to tug the whole album from the fire, but he looked towards her eyes. He didn't know what to do. Relationships sucked for him.

"Why are you doing that, Destroying your pictures?" Ez felt like he had to do something, maybe he needed to talk to Peter, or Sophie or someone else.

[daisy elizabeth lipenowski]

&& Stitch these wounds with me tonight;;

The flames hopped and jumped, nipping at the skin on Daisy’s hand. She wasn’t afraid of the pain, in fact, burning the picture was getting rid of the pain, the mental pain. Little by little it relieved her stress. The silence of the room was only broken by the crackling of the logs. The girl watched as her father shriveled away, the flames slowly devouring him. She wished she had finished him off the first time. It would have ended her pain and future suffering. Now she had to worry about what she was going to do about him after graduation.

The silence was broken by a voice that the girl knew all too well. “I’m ridding myself of the poison,” Daisy said as she dropped the contorted photo into the fire, slowly pulling her hand out. She turned toward Ezra and just looked at him and then looked away, back into the fire. The girl wasn’t much for talking. It was a habit of hers that she couldn’t seem to shake, nor did she want to. She looked down at the black photo album, her thin, delicate fingers flipped through page by page. Her mind told her to shred and burn the whole damn thing, but her heart wasn’t sure if it was ready to let it all go.

“They were a shitty excuse for parents,” Daisy stated, hoping that it would answer Ezra’s question. “And if you tell anyone, I’ll stick you in the fire with the rest of the photos,” she said through a clenched jaw. Her anger had gotten the best of her once again. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath in. “Let’s apologize and try this again, Daisy,” she said to herself calmly. The girl opened her eyes; they were a deep ocean blue and apologetic. “Sorry, Ezra,” she said sincerely, hoping that he would forgive her. Trying to get him to understand her state of mind would be near the impossible. Daisy sighed looking down at the photos on the page. “I just-,” she paused, “I don’t know.”

[ezra lewis friedkin]

Ezra was worried about Daisy, she changed constantly.. Sometimes he wished that he could understand what was going on inside of a women's mind. Ever since she had gone to the funeral of her mother, she wasn't the same. Ezra could realize the slow change that was happening in her. Though he didn't speak about it, he was quiet, which wasn't really his thought process. Ezra had been told that Daisy was scared of death, by Daisy herself. That he scared her the day that he almost died... So now things were different.

"He isn't poison you know." Ezra told her now. Ezra didn't think anything was poison unless it let it bore underneath your soul. That would be considered poison to him. "Did he say he hated you or something?" Ezra asked, utterly concerned for her at once. For an excuse to tell her something about his own life. But even at that, it was to tell Daisy she wasn't alone. "Any parent that doesn't listen is a shitty excuse for a parent."

Daisy looked like she was going to jump into the fire herself. "Who am I going to tell, and don't speak to me like that." He softened his tone when she apologized.

"Want to talk about it Dais?" Ezra asked. "I can help you out, well I can attempt to help you out, I don't know how much help I will be." He sighed hoping for a change out of her. Hoping to get her to speak more about what happened on that long ride home.

[daisy elizabeth lipenowski]

&& Stitch these wounds with me tonight;;

“Well he isn’t a father either,” Daisy said with a shrug. The man was poison to her and she had taken in enough of it for her to go stir crazy. The girl looked into the flames, avoiding eye contact at all costs. She looked distracted; she felt that way too. Focusing on anything became an issue after her mother’s death and she couldn’t exactly pick out why. “No, he didn’t, or at least that’s what I think. Half the time I didn’t know what he was saying because his speech was so slurred,” she paused, remembering the look in her father’s eyes as they spoke at the funeral, “But I know that he was thinking it.” The girl looked down at the carpet that she was kneeling on and nodded in agreement with Ezra’s observation. She couldn’t even imagine sitting down with her father to have a civilized conversation. They hadn’t had one in years.

“I said I was sorry,” Daisy said softly with a sigh. She needed to learn how to control herself. That’s why she was here, to learn to control. Ezra was lucky. If this was happening three months earlier, she probably would have thrown him into the fire place, or at least tried to. Horizon was really helping her and she realized that, but she just couldn’t shake some of the old problems. It was like her problems were crazy glued to her and there was no way of getting rid of them. A smile tugged the corners of Daisy’s mouth into a warmhearted smile. “Thanks,” she said, finally looking up at him with her ice blue eyes. “But first, do you know why I’m even here in the first place? The reason I’m at Horizon.” Maybe he would understand her a little better if he knew where she was coming from, her background, her history, the past. She thought about it a little harder. Did she really want him to know what she did? He treat her like Scott treated Shelby?

[ezra lewis friedkin]

Ezra looked at her now, "Has he tried to get to know you again? I mean has he tried to be a father to you again Daisy?" Because if he had, it was more then what his parents tried to do for him. All there arguing drove him nuts. All there arguements made him sick. All there arguements almost took his life. It was because of them that Ezra was at Horizon.

"How do you know that's what he was thinking? How do you know that people haven't changed? I mean granted some don't, some can though if given the chance." Wow he was really starting to sound like one of the counselors that played with your head. "It's fine Daisy, really." Ezra said as he noticed that she was apologizing again. He was merely pointing out that she didn't need to snap at him.

"Well you said in group you tried to kill your father with a nine iron golf club?" Ezra looked at her, did she lie during group? Was there something more. Whatever the reason, Ezra really didn't care. He really did love her.

[daisy elizabeth lipenowski]

&& Stitch these wounds with me tonight;;

“No. He hasn’t. At the funeral he told me that my mother loved me in my own way. When I asked him about himself, he merely said ‘In my own way’. He was talking about when I was little, not now and he made that part clear. He couldn’t even look me in the eyes and say something remotely comforting,” Daisy spoke with anger in her voice. She swore that she would never talk about that day, that moment. All of the pain began to flood back into her system. She could deal with pain, just not this kind. Cuts, bruises, punches, slaps and kicks, they hurt on the outside, but the words, they hurt on the inside. No amount of face makeup could hide these scars. “No calls, no letters, nothing. Now he knows what it’s like to be all alone.”

“I’m waiting for that call, the one where he will tell me: “It’s been two years, Daisy”, but I know that’s not going to happen. He’s probably passed out on the bathroom floor as we speak,” Daisy said harshly. She hated talking to people face to face; their expressions when she told them some of her feelings were never pleasant.

Ezra’s calm reaction confused Daisy. She was happy that the boy actually paid attention so she didn’t have to explain things again. But why was he so calm? His attitude toward her hadn’t changed one bit, in fact, he seemed to gravitate toward her even more. “Correction, I didn’t try to kill him. I wanted to but then realized that I wouldn’t be able to cry for the police.” The girl’s mood lightened a bit noticeably. Did the boy actually care? Would he be one of the first few people to accept her flaws?