number 12. (l.s.)

Epilogue

E P I L O G U E
-foolishly in love with a soul-

And then you left me. All of us. I didn't even know where to go. When I looked for comfort, I went to you. I spent almost my entire time with you, but knowing you weren't there anymore to give me comfort, to make me feel happy, left me with a hole in my heart.

Juliet was the first one to go home. I don't know for how long I had been crying on your body, on your chest. My heartbeat drummed through your body, but what broke me was that your chest was silent. I wish I could give you my heartbeat, I still do. I still held your hand, but you didn't hold mine back. I begged, I yelled, I cried until the doctor had to pull me off you. With my salty lips I kissed you, still something in me hoping that you'd kiss me back. But they stood cold and lifeless. Scarlett had to pull me back, and I was left crying in her arms. Or she was left crying into mine. I'm not sure anymore. Dan was the one talking to the doctors, god, I don't know how he was able to.

Rose was the second to leave, after stroking your hair, kissing your forehead, praying for you to find your peace. I was still holding your hand all that time, not wanting to let you go. Because I knew that as soon as I let go of your hand, it would be final. It would be the last time I got to touch you. I did feel how your hand got colder every second.

Scarlett was the third to leave, she didn't say goodbye to me. She just walked off. I talked to you as if it was a normal day, as if you were just asleep. "You can wake up now, it's not funny anymore," I believe I said once. I was in denial of everything.

Then they wanted to pull me away from you, they said they wanted to bring you somewhere else. I yelled at them, telling them you wouldn't want to. "You don't want to, right Louis?" I asked you, but you didn't answer me. Dan walked with them, making sure everything was okay for you. I wasn't allowed to go.

"It's better if you go home, Harry," Dan said to me, and I could count the tears on his face. But I had no home anymore. My home was you, and the place you lived - your home - was my home too. But Scarlett and Dan never asked me to go with them. And I understood. They needed time to grieve, but it still hurt me.

So I went to my 'home', shakily stepping through the door. I knew my parents were home—it was a Sunday, but I didn't greet them. Instead, I walked up the stairs, falling down to my bed. My bed was dusty, it was a long time since I'd been home. The room felt unfamiliar, like it was someone else's. I pressed my head in the pillow, and curled up my body. I wish you were there to hold me. Then my parents came into my room. Yelling at me.

I could only gaze at my wall, all my tears already being spilled. I had nothing left. My parents never asked me what was wrong, and a part of me was glad. They didn't deserve to know anything about you. They never let me be with you, and I hated them for that. But when they kept yelling, and kept screaming the same day, I snapped.

"I loved him, I loved him,'' was what I kept saying. I escaped the house before I even gave them the time to react. I had nowhere to go, so I went to the park. I knew you loved the nature, and that is what made me love it. So I slept in the park that night, laying on the wooden bench we once sat. Where we once wrote our essay, our first project together. It was also the first time you realized how much I liked staring at you. I wish I could stare at you one more time.

I didn't go to school for the following two days. I hadn't eaten in two days. Sometimes I sipped water which I had bought in a small shop nearby. After two days of just staring into nothing in the park, lonelier than ever, I realized that I was only getting more miserable. My phone was still off from the hospital, so with no sense of time—I walked to school.