The Ways the Heart Breaks
For #56:
"Give a cheer for all the broken, Listen here, because it's who we are"–Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance
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The heart doesn't break like the drawings made by so many who think they feel the pain. There isn't one large zigzag fracture straight down the middle. No, that only leaves two pieces that can be pushed back together and sewn up like a pair of ripped pants.
The heart breaks like a glass statue.
Here and there you can find large pieces, guessing which part of the heart they once formed. These are the easiest to see, and are naturally the ones you pick up first. The smaller pieces come next. You know the ones; small enough to wedge themselves in places the large pieces can't go but still large enough to tell what part they broke off of. You pick these up next.
Each piece you find renews your hope even more. Sometimes, you're blinded and can't see the dagger like edges thirsting to regain the blood lost in the crash. You find yourself believing that those blood thirsty edges won't take what they lost from you. You actually start thinking they care. That's when your hope really starts to soar.
That's when you step on a shard too small to see. That's when you begin ripping yourself apart because no matter how hard you try you just can't find the pieces. They're too small, too clear, and are the sharpest of all the pieces lost. That's when you stop, and learn.
You learn you'll never find all the pieces. You realize that because you were so foolish, you lost a part of yourself that can never be regained. You finally understand what they were talking about when they said they'd guard their hearts with their lives.
You finally give up.
And there you'll sit, broken and defeated. All around you pieces of your glass heart that you were foolish enough to let someone touch for an instant. Your little glass statue, destroyed because of a war you never wanted to be a part of.
And there will be fingers and little foot pieces, fragments of an arm or leg with shards of peasant armor and a bloodied sword. There will be an eye—just large enough to tell it was an eye—painted with his color. It will stare at you and haunt your heart like the memory that's built a mansion in your mind.
You'll look up and see all the pieces, broken and drenched in the red love of your heart. You'll start seeing things in the fragments, too: a bloody hand, a winking eye, a ghostly smile. You'll cry and beg for it to stop. Wishes will be made on stars, on blades of grass, on anything that will listen for just another chance. "I take it back! I take it all back!" will be the cry of your broken heart.
And in the end, you'll stop struggling. You'll stop searching for the lost pieces. You'll stop begging for more time. You will wake to find your tears are dried up and your heart has started beating again. You, yourself, will finally break.
And all that pain, all that hate so bottled up inside of you will burst and you will show the world the power love gave you.
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I meant to put this one up much earlier, but I figured it was too OOC. I eventually just rewrote it and put it up under an original piece somewhere else, this is the original. I'm not sure what to say, other than when writing it I tried to make it sound like someone speaking to Oma either about how she lost, or was going to lose, Shu. Funny thing, I had gotten through listening to the very song in the prompt just before I wrote the story. So I just went with it.
"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster."
-Isaac Asimov
-mcl