I.
This is how the story starts:
She is standing in front of him, and the rain is falling.
A raindrop slides into her eyes, burning and stinging.
"I love you," she says.
His eyes are wide with disbelief, shock - and her pain is heavy and raw and ugly - and then apology colours his voice.
"I'm sorry."
She shrugs, fakes a smile - anything, just to make him believe she's fine - and pretends that her world is not crashing down on her.
She turns and walks away before he can see her crying; she wants him to believe that she is the heroine she never was, that she can live on just the same without him, that she doesn't need him.
She never said she wasn't a liar.

II.
The storm stops after three days and two nights - days filled with the weight of the facade she is weaving, nights filled with insomnia and broken dreams and tears and thoughts and memories.

III.
This is how her dream goes:
She is standing behind him, and the sun is shining.
His pale skin glows in the sunlight, and a smile brightens his face.
"I love you," she says.
His eyes are wide with disbelief, shock - and her heart sinks down, down, down again - and then apology colours his voice.
"I'm sorry I never told you." He says. "I should have, from the start."
"Told me what?" She says carefully, slowly, faintly - the hopes starting to stalk her.
"I love you." He tells her, and hands her his heart.

IV.
She wakes up each night, the sobs wrecking their way through her body and she can't seem to stop shivering, trembling, shaking.
Her room is filled with his presence - every thought, every memory, every smile and touch, every what if and what might have been and if only.

V.
Nobody seems to understand - the way her heart is breaking; the way her thoughts are filled with nothing but him; the way her smiles are fake and tired and wrong; the way she is trying so hard to prove that she can do it, she can be strong, be brave, be everything she is not.

VI.
She is sick and tired of pretending, of putting on a masquerade.
She is rebellious and not like what she used to be, she is not who she was.
And then she starts to lose everything, but really, she doesn't care anymore.
Because, after all, if even he could leave her - after what he used to say and do, after all the promises - who couldn't?

VII.
She is drunk on her tears, the way they sear their way down her cheek and fall into the empty hollow of her heart.
At least they make her feel alive.

VIII.
She is sorry, for everything.
She is sorry she disappointed everyone - her parents, her friends - but she can't bring herself to change.
She is sick of change, sick of the way everything disappears and reappears out of her life, sick of the way people can leave her bleeding and dying and raw inside.

I'm sorry.

Labels: writings

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