Written super quickly at 4am. Title and summary from Fiona Apple's Every Single Night. It is worth a listen.
My heart's made of parts of all that surround me
Carla sleeps with the curtain open. Or she tries but after going to bed early and waking from a fretful doze the heavy feeling in her stomach means that sleep would be elusive for another night.
She hopes for the illusion of space but only feels more fenced in.
There is no pale glow of moonlight but then life had never been a romantic cliché. The sky was a cloudy hard mix of realism and dark blue and she finds herself staring numbly into the nothingness.
The blue softness at a crawling yet inevitable pace into something lighter and she thinks at a panic that it's still far too early for sunrise, for the anxiety of the trials of a new day.
She wanted to hold onto the peacefully cold melancholy that came in the empty early hours of the morning to those who could not sleep.
Carla takes a shower before dread drives her into agitation. It feels like an act of rebellion and so oddly timed that it makes her feel removed and safe from the rest of the world.
Within the flimsy dated walls of the flat she knows Peter would be able to hear the pounding of the water. She thinks that it will probably wake him and doesn't know what will make her feel more alone; him sleeping through her silent distress or him waking and still not coming for her.
Some days she thinks of testing his devotion with her own destructive streak but knows that the outcome would only hurt her further. Being the rational person in their relationship, constantly pulling Peter back from the brink of losing everything filled her with unease. A constant edge that stopped her relaxing with the way her heart pounded in her ears as her blood rushed through her.
They were barely holding on with their fingertips.
She understood her lover. She saw the addictive, desperate part of herself reflected in him as if looking through a shattered mirror and she hates herself with a renewed passion.
Only she could not share her concerns out of fear of finally breaking him and in turn, the whole world she built for herself upon his foundations crumbling.
So she lets the too warm water flatten her hair till it sticks and shines against the curve of her jaw and her narrow shoulders. She watches a moth drown against the egg shell white of the tiles. Watches as its wings flutter erratically as it desperately fights to unstuck itself.
Carla recites vulgar words in her head she wouldn't dare use out loud as she compensates the inevitable and finds a strange of absolution in her passive cruelty.
The water eventually grows cold and she shuts it off before the creatures end. The moth jerks for one last moment and then nothing.
Carla dresses for a new day.
