- SHATTER (by Raven Minamino a.k.a. Kuroya) ((Written: 11/09/04 Published: 2/12/05)) -

I lie awake at night, listening to the sky crying and the soft throb of my heart in my chest.

The air around me is so vast and so dark and empty that it swallows me up, crushing me with its jaws to make me smaller and more shattered than I already am.

My cold hands crawl across my skin like pale spiders, dancing with each other in the search for warmth. The rain, once so distant and soothing, now plays a harsh discord across the roof and I cannot breathe.

Sometimes I sleep, but mostly it's the lilting, forgotten sleep of broken things and when I wake up it's like the night was never there- just a whisper of a dream across my consciousness.

I remember the nightmares, though... Running through fire, lost and alone, trying desperately to find him... And the thick scent of fear and despair.

I remember how much it hurt when I couldn't find him, like he was just a dream to me all along, a whispered touch and then gone.

It hurt like it hurts to be cut with a knife- sharp, acute pain, and small roses of blood blooming across the silky whiteness that is supposed to be living flesh. Then the scars, the scars that never go away, the scars that hide below the surface like scared children and dare someone to care.

No... It hurt so much worse than that.

It hurt so much that I couldn't stop crying, terrified animal sounds escaping from my throat and into the crushing air, rebounding across the walls to find me again- my own despair.

And now...

I just feel empty.

A shell of a person, already been used and discarded. Like a candle, burnt down to a puddle of wax and no wick, useless.

He hurts me and heals me, hurts me and heals me, in a sick game he doesn't even know he's playing. And I watch and play too, because I'd never let him be alone.

Even the memories of him are starting to fade, like the flames licked my mind away, turning me into nothing but ash and embers.

I wish I could still dream, just to make sure that I'm real.

The warmth that my body gives off is small, taken in by the icy blackness, trying to make me disappear. And I wait, like a puppet on strings, waiting for the steps that I know I must take.

So empty, so cold, if only it didn't have to be this way...

If only I were worthy of him, the speck of light on this indigo horizon, speaking of the coming dawn where the sun will rise as red as blood.

The rain accosts me with its striking tone of malice, reminding me that I'm so empty I don't even remember how to cry. Empty like a broken doll, but I go on for him. He flooded me with emptiness, a vacuum that swallowed my soul into his; so now I walk behind, dragged along by an invisible thread, waiting to wake up and be filled.

Still, the darkness yawns, baring teeth as sharp as steel and bright as gold. Teeth that lure and promise and bite and snatch and kill.

I am small, I am broken, a porcelain doll in pieces on the floor.

But I still exist.

The night chews, tears, swallows.

The rain is in me, cold and hard but welcoming.

And the night is extinguished like a candle flame, flickering and then gone, wisps of silver smoke invading my empty lungs.

I lie awake, listening to the sky crying icy tears. My heart beats like a drum solo to the world and the air has swallowed me in pieces.

The rain is crying for me... Listen to the mournful, terrible sound, in you and around you until you're afraid to move, lest you break its rhythm.

I am small, I am broken, I am empty, and the sky cries tears that I don't think I even still have inside of me.

I lie awake, but my heart is shattered like a wineglass on wood.

Then silence.

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