It's only in his absence that she realises just how he's ruined her. She's got every smile he's ever given her pressed like flowers between the pages of her mind, she's got his laughter bottled and all the words he's said to her placed between glass plates and catalogued. He burns so bright that he's managed to sear an impression of himself on her skin without even trying. It's almost unfair how in love with him she is, how easily he could trap her with just one look, one glance. She's long past the stage of finding a way out, of denying what's painted in neon colours across her face, the truth is she's got his fingerprints burned into the surface of her heart from all the times she's tried to lay her in his palms and he doesn't even know.
She wants to blame him, wants to say it's his fault she fell, say it was him, with his eyes that cut right through her and his voice that sounds like home, that has captured her heart without him ever needing to lift a finger. But, it was her that opened the door to her mind wide open and pulled him inside, it was her who had carved a home for him in her heart and given him the key so he could come and go as pleased. Maybe if he wasn't quite so bright and quite so beautiful she would have been able to snatch the key she made him right out of his hands; been able to give it to someone who she knew would use it, would covet it.
It wasn't right to say that he had ruined her, not when she'd took the red hot poker of all his promises and branded herself, not when she'd fallen with both eyes wide open knowing that he was still standing with his eyes shut tight, not when she'd been the one to ruin herself with no help from him.
Not when she'd do it over and over and over again.