1.
Beth loved sunsets.
Her eyes twinkled whenever the sun slipped down to sleep. The creamy cotton candy colored clouds mingling together like rosy cheeked lovers in the sky. She loved the feeling it gave her, the sense of finality without the consequence. The sun would disappear but never for forever. Everyone left Beth after a while, the whispers and promises of return on their lips but never in their eyes.
2.
Beth slipped into sleep like the sun but prayed not to rise again. The dull ache was twisting through her limbs, soul, and mind combined. The pill bottles whined at her to pick them up, their song a mournful moan of what she once was, or of what she once thought herself to be. She couldn't remember the days before the softened haze. The memories faded around the edges as if moments were just reveries. Dreams that flitter around and flee, dreams that mask reality.
3.
It was a bitter cold morning when Beth rose from her bed, buying into the business of building herself up again. The pill bottles busied themselves with their bellowing but melancholy orchestra. She drowned them out with the sound of her own feet hitting pavement, a rhythm of steps and breaths, a beat that bopped along even after the melody concluded. She sprinted, twisting around trees, replicating the route of the pain she felt, traveling around and never slowing. The brisk air burned her lungs with every breath, a simple reminder that she was alive, that she had survived another night. At 6:23 am the sun returned with a well rested smile. The warmth of its greeting permeated through the horizon, a splatter of pinks and oranges kissed with purple glossed lips. The sun always rose again.
Beth knew she could do the same.
