04

One day, a girl’s eyes traced her ceiling, each crack, each crevice, each mark.

In those crevices, she could relate her memories, and as her chest rose in inhalation, her eyes widened. A life she had forgotten had existed, grew from those cracks, and re-awoke in her heart.

A life of years ago grew from these cracks in plaster, and drew from her soul.

She was no longer lying on that bed, her legs wrapped gently in sheets.

She was in his house, she was smiling, and he existed in time.

She watched him through glassy, pale blue eyes. She could feel the edges of her lips tingle in the promise of a smile; feel the heat within her chest as she felt his stare.

She drowned the spoon into the bowl again, scooping up a cluster of golden flakes of cereal. She smiled.

Twisting the spoon within her grasp, she pulled it close to her lips, feeling the icy touch of white milk touch her skin before tilting it onto her tongue.

Her legs gently crossed across one another, shuddering as they brushed against his under the table, she raised her eyes to meet his and spoke, smiling as she did so, not for her words, but for his content silence.

And he just sat. And smiled.

She couldn’t understand it, she couldn’t understand how his face never dulled, how his voice never rose against hers.

She could sit, and eat and speak, and laugh to herself, and he did not care. He seemed happy, merely to be there, merely to listen.

She raised another cluster of flakes to her lips, her stomach growling in anticipation. She hadn’t eaten all day.

“You must think I’m a savage.” She mumbled.

He merely shook his head, the corner of his eyes wrinkling slightly as he did, he was so still.

She swallowed quickly, and felt a pang within her chest, reminded of her own self, her own beliefs.

She loved to watch him, as he spoke; she loved the way his eyes shut briefly as he smiled, how he couldn’t look her in the eyes when he spoke from something more than the head, how he just smiled to himself as he did.

She loved the way she could watch her fingertips as she rested against his shoulder, how she could intertwine her hands and feel his stare on her.

She couldn’t bring herself to look at him, when she thought of what lay ahead.

All she wanted was to enjoy it, for as long as her heart would allow, for as long as she could remain, in heart, alone.

She could only feel guilt when he looked at her, with such kindness, with such willingness in all, to merely be hers.

Hers to hold, hers to watch, hers to speak with, hers to smile for, hers to miss, hers to think of, every time she felt alone, felt so alone she could not take solace.

She couldn’t trust her heart to be so kind.

There was something, something in him as she spoke and heard him laugh that made her stay. Something that controlled her, something that, for once, she could not push away.

She had learned, it hurt too much, it hurt more in fact, to push him away, then to lie in his arms and feel at home, despite the fear that encased her each second she did.

It was fear, but for once she felt alive.

And so she sat. Her elbows leaned against the kitchen table, the faint click of the clock ticking in the background as she happily shoveled flakes of cereal unashamedly into her famished mouth.

She surrendered her heart to this tiny moment. She allowed herself to feel emotion, to feel how happy this made her. That someone else could make her happy, that she allowed someone else to make her feel this way.

Happy.

She could only smile. She could only expel the future, ignore it, ignore her heart and her soul and her memories and her walls.

She, in this miniscule moment, forgot how she could never feel, how she could never let a soul in, how she could never fall, and she just, raised her head, and watched him.

In this moment, she saw him like she’d never allowed herself to see another, taking in each feature, tracing each line, dwelling on each mark, each crevice of emotion, relishing in each silent smile, each blatant unaware turn of the head, each piece that she took, in that second, into her heart, to feel for one second, and stay cold for the rest, to feel no pain, to promise nothing.

There were times, that she would be with him, a millimeter of space between them, a silence so warm she swore her skin was heated by it, that she wanted nothing more than to let him know.

Let him know that she felt more than she allowed him to think, forced him to think, told him to think, and warned him to think.

She wanted nothing more in these moments of silence, to reach for his face, pull him in, and tell him how happy she was, how much she missed him when he wasn’t there, how wide she smiled when his name arose on her shoddy phone.

She wanted to tell him how scared she was of this. How much it frightened her to feel something for someone, how safe, and at home she felt when she could smell him on the edges of her jumper as she slept.

But she didn’t.

She knew of the cruelty that lay in this, she could see the hurt in his eyes sometimes, when she spoke, when she held each crevice of emotion he held in her, and crushed it with few words, with a blank cold stare of indifference, because she knew, she could not feel this forever, she knew her emotions were subject to change, influence, and repression.

She knew her own heart would destroy them, and seek out to end each emotion she would ever speak.

And so she sat, in silence with the tingle of a smile on her lips, her legs crossed under the kitchen table, the clock ticking faintly, her heart racing in fear, as she sat with him, as he sat with the girl with an icy heart and a locked soul, as she watched him, and only felt warmth.

And in that moment, she would never know that his silence, his warm blue eyes, would be her detriment, her sweet downfall and destructor.

As she lay on her bed, her heart reliving a life now gone, she knew in honesty, she would not have had it another way.

And so, raising her head towards the window, she craned her face closer to music, her nose gently pressing against a cold window pane, and she watched the reflection of her blue eyes.

Only imagining, in one second of nostalgia, one moment of song, they were his.