Post by paizlee on Nov 2, 2024 10:01:13 GMT -6
You look like a memory I wish I could forget.
There is something cold and harsh to the world, that runs deeper in the people who often try to brighten the dark spots - an untold sadness that sits as an invisible weight on the shoulders of good people - a bad person does a bad thing knowing its bad and doing it anyway, but only a truly good person can lead you down to hell with the best intentions.
I had all and then most of you. Some and now none of you.
Noah had helped her look for hours, scouring the parking lot, the lunchroom, her room and everywhere else they could think of. On any other day his companionship would have been a welcome reprieve from the scratching at the edges of her brain. But today even his company felt like a betrayal and so she had lied, agreeing to go back and prepare for their match later. She had let the words fall so easily from her lips; a gentle dismissal so that she could finally be alone. She was always supposed to be alone.
Truthfully the match felt like another betrayal, a white lie for the better of the many. She didn’t belong out there, didn’t belong anywhere. Without that anchor, she was weightless and meaningless. There was nothing but the haunting emptiness ahead of her, a bright sun overhead invisible to the shadows that reached out and tore at her soul.
She had cried herself sick, tears burning her eyes as bile did her throat. A sobering reality hitting her faster than her knees the tarmac as she doubled over, a fresh wave of grief and regret taking hold. The pain was there, the sharp sting of gravel in her knees. The palms of her hands dragged raw across the uneven surface last night, opening fresh wounds on impact. Her stomach twisted in knots, ejecting the heartache like venom from her body. But it was distant; irrelevant in comparison to the agony of her memories.
When the night was full of terrors. And your eyes were filled with tears.
To be seventeen and innocently in love. Her mind pulled her back into the gossamer-covered memories, they were as soft as a breath, fading like a whisper and yet as real and tangible as the road beneath her knees. The bracelet was like a tether, keeping her in the now without ever truly letting go of the feelings tied to the past. Without it the two worlds overlapped and present pain became past pain; fresh grief tasted metallic like the smell of blood in her nostrils. The whistling of the wind merging into emergency sirens that screamed out above the sound of his voice, drowning out words she had rewritten in her mind a thousand times.
The acceptance of loss seemed beyond any possibility. The loss of him, the loss of the bracelet and now the loss of herself. Frozen like a soul in purgatory not existing in the now or then, but instead broken and moulded but the space between the two. The burn of her tears the same, flooding her cheeks and robbing her of her breath. His hand felt real in hers, clammy and weak… A tentative hold from the past that pushed through as if to shake her. But whatever it was that tried so desperately to reach her failed and so she remained twisting and still.
Time passed, a second stretching to an hour and an hour passing in a blink. It was dark now, the sun set to rest and the sounds of the night began to stir around her. It was impossible to know how long she had sat there, haunted by the warmth of his memory and the terror of his loss. She had cried until there was nothing left in her to cry, had searched until her body was sore and tired. Something in the back of her mind willed her to rest, but the anger of her betrayals - the clawing at her brain that longed to rip through the rest of her - forced her to go on.
She shouldn’t be there, dressed up so prettily for the lie to continue. The flask in her pocket was the only reprieve, her only chance of containing everything, of making it through until she could search again. Warm on her aching throat, soothing her aching lungs. She gulped it down, the comforting embrace of another reality. A place where she was someone else. Where she couldn’t remember, didn’t have to be, at all. The security of keeping reality locked away behind a thin film, another life playing out before her eyes.
She would come back here after and search, she would never be able to stop the search. Even when the bracelet was found she would be locked in a search for meaning, for reasons that simply don’t exist… But for now she was able to let him float away in a fog of bright lights, an Angel for the Devil on her shoulder.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Haunted by the ghost of you.
There is something cold and harsh to the world, that runs deeper in the people who often try to brighten the dark spots - an untold sadness that sits as an invisible weight on the shoulders of good people - a bad person does a bad thing knowing its bad and doing it anyway, but only a truly good person can lead you down to hell with the best intentions.
I had all and then most of you. Some and now none of you.
Noah had helped her look for hours, scouring the parking lot, the lunchroom, her room and everywhere else they could think of. On any other day his companionship would have been a welcome reprieve from the scratching at the edges of her brain. But today even his company felt like a betrayal and so she had lied, agreeing to go back and prepare for their match later. She had let the words fall so easily from her lips; a gentle dismissal so that she could finally be alone. She was always supposed to be alone.
Truthfully the match felt like another betrayal, a white lie for the better of the many. She didn’t belong out there, didn’t belong anywhere. Without that anchor, she was weightless and meaningless. There was nothing but the haunting emptiness ahead of her, a bright sun overhead invisible to the shadows that reached out and tore at her soul.
She had cried herself sick, tears burning her eyes as bile did her throat. A sobering reality hitting her faster than her knees the tarmac as she doubled over, a fresh wave of grief and regret taking hold. The pain was there, the sharp sting of gravel in her knees. The palms of her hands dragged raw across the uneven surface last night, opening fresh wounds on impact. Her stomach twisted in knots, ejecting the heartache like venom from her body. But it was distant; irrelevant in comparison to the agony of her memories.
When the night was full of terrors. And your eyes were filled with tears.
To be seventeen and innocently in love. Her mind pulled her back into the gossamer-covered memories, they were as soft as a breath, fading like a whisper and yet as real and tangible as the road beneath her knees. The bracelet was like a tether, keeping her in the now without ever truly letting go of the feelings tied to the past. Without it the two worlds overlapped and present pain became past pain; fresh grief tasted metallic like the smell of blood in her nostrils. The whistling of the wind merging into emergency sirens that screamed out above the sound of his voice, drowning out words she had rewritten in her mind a thousand times.
The acceptance of loss seemed beyond any possibility. The loss of him, the loss of the bracelet and now the loss of herself. Frozen like a soul in purgatory not existing in the now or then, but instead broken and moulded but the space between the two. The burn of her tears the same, flooding her cheeks and robbing her of her breath. His hand felt real in hers, clammy and weak… A tentative hold from the past that pushed through as if to shake her. But whatever it was that tried so desperately to reach her failed and so she remained twisting and still.
Time passed, a second stretching to an hour and an hour passing in a blink. It was dark now, the sun set to rest and the sounds of the night began to stir around her. It was impossible to know how long she had sat there, haunted by the warmth of his memory and the terror of his loss. She had cried until there was nothing left in her to cry, had searched until her body was sore and tired. Something in the back of her mind willed her to rest, but the anger of her betrayals - the clawing at her brain that longed to rip through the rest of her - forced her to go on.
She shouldn’t be there, dressed up so prettily for the lie to continue. The flask in her pocket was the only reprieve, her only chance of containing everything, of making it through until she could search again. Warm on her aching throat, soothing her aching lungs. She gulped it down, the comforting embrace of another reality. A place where she was someone else. Where she couldn’t remember, didn’t have to be, at all. The security of keeping reality locked away behind a thin film, another life playing out before her eyes.
She would come back here after and search, she would never be able to stop the search. Even when the bracelet was found she would be locked in a search for meaning, for reasons that simply don’t exist… But for now she was able to let him float away in a fog of bright lights, an Angel for the Devil on her shoulder.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Haunted by the ghost of you.