between the lines
"i can't pretend that i don't know
i guess it goes without saying
there's nothing really left worth saving
i lost you so long ago"
—unsaid [angels fall]
†
Death holds no relief for the damned.
Oh, but there are times when ignorance will delude her, if but for a mere seconds, before it'll hit her all over again, leaving her crashing from the high, burning like those goddamn cigarettes— stealing the non-existent breath from charred lungs with every sickening thud of a heart that no longer has any reason to beat.
Forced to relieve those last moments, the desperate pleas of a boy long dead still reverberating in her mind, off the walls of the bathroom. Words that, were engraved into the walls of the house and her deluded little mind—
"Don't you die on me!"
[ His name a prayer better left unspoken—
she's better off without him in her life anyways.
...right? ]
†
Just because she can't see him, doesn't mean she can't feel him.
Eyes the color of coal glitter in the dying candle-light pierce the veil of shadows; she'll swear she hears the voice of the only monster she'll ever know, calling out to her in her head.
But if she blinks, he'll vanish, fade into the four walls of a room that, at separate points in their lives, had belonged to both of them. Fall down on the bed that covered the guns and the drugs, a place of death and where for the first time—
"GO AWAY!"
[ But the house remembers—
the pretty pills that finally made the pain
GO AWAY. ]
†
He doesn't even leave a note.
Just a painted black rose nestled in the sheets beside her, the bitter smell of paint fanning across her face as pale digits automatically clasp the offending flower. Nestle in the warmth for just a moment.
Amber orbs open to see the word normal crossed out on the chalkboard. Thorns jab like knives at her palms as she snaps the stem once, twice, thrice, the sickeningly sweet aroma of of the broken promises as she strips the petals off. Try to forget—
"I know you don't like normal things, so I painted it black."
[ She hates him she hates him she hates him she—
what's the word?
How does that sentence end? ]
†
Oh, but in the end she's just as sick as he is.
Lines that glitter like the stars she's not quite sure she remembers, a rolled up dollar bill she'll never have use for again. Cigarettes aren't cutting it for her, and she won't deny that there wasn't at least a small part of her that marveled at just how beautifully destructive the drug looked in the pale moonlight. Nerves crackle like electricity as she snorts it, flying higher, higher, higher—
Only to fall in the arms of a boy whose blood fills the cracks in the floorboards, a boy whose tears bathed her fingers when she held him one last time and whose lips had spun lies she had been all too willing to believe—
"What's going on? What did you do to me?"
[ Dry teardrops and choked sobs
Voices screaming into the darkness and crying—
for a love crisscrossed with the scars on their wrists. ]
†
"Violet."
He dares step forward, an impulsive move, given their history. Hands fist at her sides, ready to deliver a blow to his face if he dares venture closer to where she stands.
But she doesn't step back.
Her name falls from his lips with the reverence of a prayer, but all she wants is to scream at him to go away, to hurt him in all the ways he hurt her. Another step, breaking thousands of unspoken rules as he'll apologize, but to what end? He should know by now that it's not okay, it's never going to be okay, he can't just walk back into her life and assume that everything's going to be okay—
"I would never let anyone, or anything hurt you."
[ So many dreams that have died—
love is lost
in the final stages of decay ]
†
Whoever said it was was better to have loved and lost than never at all was as foolish as the hope that glimmered in the eyes of the dead boy.
"Please."
So pathetic when he asks for something that he knows far too well she won't give him, but perhaps they'll have changed roles in the reality that left them somewhere between the coffin and the cradle. Another step— her initiating the movement for once— watching as the dying flame of hope (or was it desperation?) hidden in eyes of coal ignite into a monstrous flame. She might have felt bad for him as he stepped closer, arms reaching toward her—
The sickening sound of her fist colliding with his face shattered whatever hopes he had in an instant.
"What? Don't do this."
[ Bruises that will fade
to the color of her name—
he deserves that much ]
†
She prefers things that are tainted.
Maybe it's the cigarettes that clogged her lungs with tar. Maybe it's the snow-white crystals that betray her earlier activities. Or maybe it's this house, the reason that she'll never know a life outside the confines of this property where she's doomed to rot until the end of time. But all the same, she'll find a little sadistic smile of her own plastered across her features at the tears that spring all-too quickly to those broken tar-black eyes.
A grin reflected in teardrops that fall, it's just like that day in the basement so long ago where their roles were reversed. Laughing like the insane and screaming that she never wanted to see him again. A frown that mirrors his own as she looks at him, wondering how they ever got this way as her fingers reach out tentatively towards the blushing hand-print on his face—
"Something's changed in you. Towards me. You're distant, cold."
[ She won't admit that maybe—
just maybe—
she still might—
(whisper the words
they can't be true, right?)
love him. ]
†
It's the drugs.
Or, at least, that's what she tells herself as wayward fingers brush a lock of hair behind his ear, her thumb brushing away the streaks tears have worn on his face. He'll remember, she'll forget, and though the bruises will heal, the scars that litter their arms will stay with them forever. She hasn't forgiven him, he should be smart enough to figure that—
But suddenly he's kissing her— or is she kissing him?— and she doesn't know what to do or say. It's a desperate attempt just to feel alive, if but for a few seconds. Once upon a time, they were happy, but now they're reduced to a tangle of clothes and tears and she doesn't know why she isn't pushing him away, but perhaps—
Perhaps they're just two halves of a broken soul.
"I hardly feel anything."
†
There's nothing beautiful or poetic about it.
Her nails bite into the flesh of his shoulders and the entire time she keeps her eyes shut tight because she knows all too well that if she looks at him, she won't be able to pretend any of this is okay, when it's not. She's using him in his vulnerable state, and no matter how much she tries to tell herself otherwise, it doesn't make any of this okay.
She loves him, but it's not enough.
"The darkness. It has me."
†
When it's over she doesn't even look at him.
Just rolls onto her side and lies against a body that's become so foreign to her, though she used to know it too well. He was broken before he met her, she'll realize only now as his fingers slip through her own. His soul was never hers to save, it's not her place to free him. They'll lie here, in a coffin that's dragged them into the grave far too young with no hope for escape.
Look over at him in a moment of weakness and drown in those bottomless black eyes as his grip on her little hand only intensifies.
"I never said goodbye."
†
He's already gone by the time she opens her eyes.
She would've believed that she dreamed the whole thing, but her head aches and when she sits up, she'll find herself covered in black rose petals. Swear that she sees eyes that glitter like onyxes peering at her from the shadows, but when she blinks they're gone.
Amber hues shift to the chalkboard, and she'll find a note written in penmanship she hasn't seen for so long—
"I'll wait. Forever, if I have to."
†