time is taking its sweet time erasing you.
x
winter without her is colder. the trees bare and naked are harsh against the midnight sky and splatters of silvered stars hidden amongst clusters of clouds.
sometimes he runs to the end of the California cliffs and sees nothing, epically nothing lying in the wake of black black black and he considers putting one foot out in the dying air and joining her.
only sometimes.
other times he smells freesia flowers and can picture chocolate whorls of curls on her porcelain ivory steel collarbone, understanding orbs of amber tracing his jawline, red fingernails on his olive skin. other times words choke in his throat and he feels that anchor drag him to the eternity of where they used to be an us. the world laughs with her memory and he does the same.
other times it feels hollow. and he only misses her more.
x
he tries to wield the Chinese ring daggers in her wake really he does. all that happens is his hands are wrecked, slices and slashes along his palms, painful slits in between the valleys of his fingers, blisters on the tips and pads. they heal quickly some days and other days, they simmer and rage against his flesh, but he doesn't mind. can still hear her simpering giggles at his pain from what seems like lifetimes ago.
he was never whole enough to deserve her love anyway.
he pulls the blade upon his hand, feels it draw blood bright and crimson, and he muffles a sob, wraps his hand tighter around the blade. he sees her from a distance, light fog enveloping, an arrow drawn to her chin and surprise in her eyes, slight tick of a heatbreaking smile on the twitch of her mouth.
he falls in love all over. it doesn't matter that she's a ghost in the wind.
x
she's been screaming for days. or at least she thinks she has.
in fashion true to only her, she gets dressed each day like there is another girl in the room with a full heart and a blinding grin. she makes two commentaries on her skirts and shoes and sweaters, laughing in turn at her own comments, fingers threaded through the strawberry blonde locks that wrangle their way down her back.
in the corner of the mirror on her dresser, stuck between a gilded frame and a ticket stub, is a photo of two girls with their heads thrown back and wide cheeked smiles. her emerald eyes sting and water, she opens her mouth to let it go, let it out.
silence. all she hears is white noise.
x
he's fine. really he's fine.
(until he goes into his daughter's bedroom and touches her unmade bed, a dog eared book on her bedside table, a half drunk tea cup of earl grey, and a smudged photo of them in a glass frame on her nightstand.)
warriors bury the dead. the leaders honor the dead. today he isn't a warrior and she isn't a leader. they are a father and a daughter. or at least they were.
he allows himself to mourn, to feel everything all at once, and it crashes in like the ocean during a thunderstorm. she is a maelstrom and he isn't prepared for this, hasn't battened down his hatches, hasn't thrown down the doors, hasn't broken all the windows in the loft.
she makes him understand why storms are named after people. and he has never been so proud.
x
he doesn't know how to do this. doesn't know how to feel this unbalance.
it's a feeling that he cannot comprehend; anxiety swallows his soul and drowns his reason. and he can't even look at her lover or her best friend because he doesn't know what to say or what to snark or how to make them feel anything but what they are feeling right now because there would have been an answer in the glint of an arrow, a fleur de leis etched into silver, and aimed for the heart.
deadly blow, once in a lifetime kind of girl. this he knows even if he cannot understand it fully.
x
he's not their leader.
they're a bunch of teenagers. they can't handle this. losing a member of your pack is like losing a limb.
he puts his hand on his alpha's shoulder, a younger boy, a smarter boy, and loving boy. love will kill you or it will resurrect you. that anchors pulls down to the depths and he struggles to help them, all them, his responsibility, to stay afloat.
x
she goes with a whimper, not a bang. the kind of painstakingly beauty even in death. she supposes that heaven couldn't wait.