A.N.: Someone got me into unoisa and i have a lot of feelings
You know without anyone having told you, it rings at your ears with such clarity you are for a second suspended in this reality. The room and its floor falls away from you and nothing else exists in this moment, not the sound of your world crumbling down outside that window or the impending realization that you are much smaller than any of it. Sound and sight do not return to you until your lungs begin to burn, until the air shreds through your clenched teeth and your body doubles over. There are not enough fingers to quell the tears spilling hot down your cheeks and so you do not attempt to, and where you expect your voice to tumble out of you it draws in close and balls up in your throat.
Something old and trembling comes rising up within you, wide-eyed and all alone. It whispers its tragedies back to you and you are reminded that you had never been strong enough to bear them, you're not sure what to do with yourself when the strongest part of you had never belonged to you in the first place.
You don't believe you've ever been broken, but there is no other way to describe how it tugs and pulls within you. You feel as if a half of you has been stolen away, the sudden void opening up within you aching and wanting. Everything inside of you is drawing up, coaxing you to fold into the floor and never move again.
You are alone now, it tells you. All alone.
.x.
The little girl looks nothing like him, but everything about her screams his name and you cannot look at her without it seizing up within you violently.
No one is to blame, you think you're supposed to think. No one is at fault here and this was all bound to happen eventually, it just came quicker than you could've anticipated and you had had no time to prepare yourself.
Not a single part of you believes you ever could have been but the fact still remains, you should have seen this coming. There had never been the promise of forever, time had appeared to stretch before you endlessly and you had allowed yourself to be blinded by this far too easily. No one would find way to sympathize with you this and so you accept your folly with the sort of grace you'd always envied her.
This is as much as you can muster, again you are pulled from a resemblance that is not there and something a lot like rage begins to scratch at the base of your chest.
.x.
In the spaces between each confrontation there is too much time to think. You reimagine exactly what you don't want to and in this way you learn the mind is a vengeful thing. The nighttime sky looks a lot like it always does and for a split second you are in her room, you are shaking and afraid and she dispels your fears so easily you cannot catch your breath underneath it. You are alive, you are important, you are safe, there is no need for worry here, silly girl, nothing's gonna hurt you—not while I'm still breathing —
The grimace that pulls on your mouth squeezes a sob from between your lips and there is no hiding from this anymore. You cannot pinch your skin hard enough to wake you from what you cannot wake from, there is no remedy for what has already been done. The burning taste of white tea, or sweet bread, or soft skin will not relieve you from this living nightmare.
You fill your lungs and you wonder if your own body is working against you, the memory of her eyes and the way they looked at you sometimes is seared into your very flesh and you can feel it pulsing where her touch had once sent nervous shocks.
Everything hurts. All of it, all at once.
.x.
Part of you wants to dig your fingers into his chest, to pull his heart, mangled and throbbing, from the crooked teeth of his ribcage so that he may feel even a fraction of what you are feeling right now. He is loud in all ways you are not and every bone in your body splits with every screaming grin, gives into itself at the thundering pressure of his every breath.
There is the seething thought that he does not deserve to be here, that the line of his shoulders should be burdened with the weight of guilt as heavily as you are dragged down by grief—if at one time he had worshiped her legacy, you cannot find it. If he is as great as they say he is, you do not understand how he could have survived her brilliance without scarring beyond all recognition.
If love is as all-consuming as they say it is, you do not understand why you are still here, why you have not collapsed into yourself.
None of you is bleeding, but you have never more felt as if you have been sliced apart from the inside out.
To know you will never feel the gentle pull of her fingers through your hair is the sharpest blade, cuts right down to the bone and leaves nothing untouched. It is minutes before you realize you are still standing, still breathing.
All alone.
.x.