She can practically hear the chaos behind his silence.

She can practically feel his tongue behind his teeth, taste the blood of his decision on the velvety texture. The darkness is more suffocating than she would like it to be. Her eyes are perfectly clear and wide open and she stares at the ceiling in the darkness, wind from the fan rolling on her body like laughter, or tears. Like nothing at all, cold and impersonal.

She breathes through her mouth, aware and calculated as she does.

She asked him what he wants, before, and he didn�t give her a straightforward answer, because maybe he doesn�t have one. She wanted to say something that would make him love her, or make him explain why he can�t at least need her, want her. She almost wants him to fall and crash into little pieces that only she would be able to put back together. She wonders if there is any woman that could make him vulnerable enough to fall apart.

She wants to fall apart, too. But he�d never put her back together. He wouldn�t know how her pieces went before.

She listens to his breaths, obscured by the rain and the loud whistle of the wind, the rattle of leaves as it dances through the trees. And inside, she listens to the clamor in the calm. His body is stiff on his soft mattress, rigid and frigid and colder than the fan�s air on her naked skin. She doesn�t need to look at him to know that he�s not looking at her.

She doesn�t know when she became used to feeling alone with him right next to her.

She resents him for spoiling her attempt at happiness, futile though it may be, with his lack thereof. He called her his date in front of people at the party, and she had no idea to whom he was referring, because he never looked directly at her when he said it.

She remembers vaguely not feeling empty inside. She thinks she might have been alone then, in the true sense rather than this current fabrication.

She tries to avoid the thought that it�s all amendable between them when it�s not. She tries to convince herself and her subconscious that staying and continuing this farce (what she can call it in the rare moments when she�s honest with herself) won�t morph it into something more. Funny, her honesty with other people is brutal, borders on abusive � yet she subjects herself to lies of denial or some sort of dark, morbid and knowingly false hope, which is probably worse.

She leans into his mattress, soaked with their sweat and likely the scent of her desperation. Her nails scrape the bed like they would his back, more viciously than she intends.

She�s more exposed to oblivion now than she has been to him in so many weeks.

She allows the void to devour her like a lover and seep into her like life. She closes her eyes. She breathes in and out, measured breaths. The wind hits his room again, foolish and brave enough to try and break down his solid walls. She is invisible and invincible, resigned and whole.

Just for a moment, she gives up on him entirely and lets go. If she could stretch that moment, she might survive this.

<< & >>