still breathing

Did this evil have a name? As hard as she tried to turn things around, it still remained. She spent nights lying awake trying to decipher through the feelings, but she just couldn’t put a face to it. Her chest tightened and the pressure began to build. She thought she had left this behind. She thought she was ready to let it go. But the fear seemed stronger than her voice. The words she wanted to yell crept up slowly from her heart, only to be violently shoved back into their place with the lies that she was trying so desperately to leave behind. She thought maybe this time she would get it right. After years of straddling the fence, it was time for her to choose a side. She promised herself that it would be different. She promised him that it would be different. Obviously she was in the business of breaking promises.  Did this evil have a name? She wished with everything that she had that she could put a finger on it. There was something that lingered, that she couldn’t get away from. Nothing can be erased, but she hoped all things could be forgotten. Maybe this wasn’t something she should hope for. Maybe forgetting wasn’t cutting it anymore. Maybe it never really did.

For somebody so level-headed, she was beginning to lose her balance and reached for anything that could provide clarity to this distortion. There were minutes where it made sense. It was in those minutes that she felt closest to him. She promised him her undivided attention and her fierce devotion. But the morning would come just as quickly as those minutes passed, and for the life of her she couldn’t recapture the feelings or the promises she had made the night before. There was something there. Something in the way. Something she couldn’t put a face to. She recognized it’s presence by the strange silence that her heart fell into, when in reality it was burning to be heard. She could tell when it entered the room because it pushed her head down in shame. Something that reminded her that she wasn’t there yet and she shouldn’t deceive herself into thinking it would come so easily or quickly. Did this evil have a name? She felt time was slipping away, but it would be time well spent to send it back to hell where it came from.

She was becoming strangely attentive of just how far she had drifted…from everything. In the process of trying to protect herself from the world, she had managed to become an island. Somewhere along the way she had grown accustomed to this way of surviving, only to arrive at the conclusion that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Could humanity really be destined to live and die like this? She prayed there was a different way.

Oddly enough however, she found she wasn’t the only one. All of these years living in hiding had done exponential damage to her heart, but it had no bearing on its ability to still bleed. The pain that she had suppressed from her own life was now joined with the ache in her stomach she felt towards mankind. She could see it in their eyes. Their diverted glances would catch hers every once in a while, and for a second they would wait for her to take notice. She could sense it in the silence that they cling to when their insides were screaming to be heard. She was more than familiar with that same silence, and if she could tell them one thing it would be that it is dangerous. She knew it all too well. What she once thought as wise and practical, was the very thing to add salt to the open wound. And in fact, of all her long and restless nights she was aware that her heart in isolation was serving nobody but the devil himself.