faodail; sdmn imagines [open]

four. ethan

BROKEN HEARTSTRINGS CAN'T FUNCTION PROPERLY ANYMORE.

a night, cold. coldest they've had in a while.

a boy, fallen in a flurry of warm breaths and tangled bedsheets and chapped lips. an empty bottle, shattered from its impact on the wall.

chipped paint, peeling.

he can't stand it, peels the off-white texture away from the wall in the same way he peeled her lies away, one by one.

a heart, with more jagged and loose pieces than the bottle, and more fracture lines than the paint.

the paint. the paint. the paint.

chipped, cracked, not quite pure, embedded in memories of when the light hit it just right. and warmth.

oh, the warmth.

but now it is cold. coldest they've had in a while.

and the boy sits with his head in his hands, bruises littering his pride like multicoloured blotches. because, boy, did he fall.

in a flurry of warm breaths and tangled bedsheets and chapped lips. specifically, for her white smiles and dark, warm skin. and her words, woven from nothingness and leaving paracosms and open mouths in her wake. none of them noticed the lies and the fake laughs, fake smiles, until they were too far away from her footsteps to see the traces she'd left behind.

he sighed, rubbing his aching head. maybe he was too caught up in the memories playing out in front of him.

this room still echoed her laugh over and over again. she still stood in front of him in baggy dungarees and an off-white paint smudge on her forehead. and they still cuddled against each other by the fake fire in the hearth on the coldest nights of the year.

because it was cold, so, so cold, without her.

and his head was fuzzy, maybe it's the alcohol, or maybe it's the hundreds of memories that he can't seem to get rid of — the laughs, and the smiles. maybe it's the one time where the air was devoid of emotion, the time she told him she was breaking up with him.

that's not his favourite, but it's the one he keeps coming back to.

—short and sad today sorry sorry