Love is Madness

18: B ä r é feet and Hëãt

18: B ä r é feet and Hëãt

Thirteen days into summer.

Mikhael had disappeared.

Mikhael had walked away from her and he hadn't come back.

Maybe that's what we do; act like the people we love so we don't miss them so hard. Because if we remind ourselves of those absent souls, then they haven't left completely, have they?

We can't miss them if they're right there, inside us; behind us, beside us, when we do the same stupid things they did. We can't miss them if we peer into mirrors and see our beloved ones staring at us, when we know what they say and what they do, when we can see their sadness reflected in our own eyes.

So Lissa missed her daddy, with the way he crooned his Scottish lullabies, his drunken angelcakes that she and Mikhael would try to bake and fall about laughing and tipsy instead; and she sang his old songs even if they made her cry. So she missed her mamaè, with her quicksung Portuguese and coffee-black eyes; her startling paintings and unconditional love: she tried to draw and ate the hottest chillies she could find; even if they made her cry.

She refused to cry for Mikhael.

Even if he was gone.

Even if he had fucjing walked out on her again, without a word or reason or anything, just storming out in a rage, probably to do something stupid. And only because he couldn't handle all the questions from his friends as they crowded round him the other night or something else ridiculous.

Even when she'd so desperately wished he'd stay.

Even when everything was wrong without him, even when she couldn't even think straight, couldn't even breathe, even when she hurt so bad she thought she might throw up. She refused to cry even for a second. So the tears grew inwards and turned bitter, and that made her want to forget.

Now she couldn't care less about anything or anyone, now she acted out.

She missed Mikhael. Missed him until she went dizzy.

It took her four days to get that bad.

So she mirrored his actions, behaved exactly as recklessly as he did, lost all self-preservation in a subconscious effort to bring him back to her.

She ran hard and fast. She tasted the vicious edge of pain. She made her head spin and her heart jump past her teeth.

-jumping off a cliff into the ocean at night time, when the sharks came out to hunt. Who cared? She didn't, and neither did Sabe's disreputable friends-

-getting drunk for the first time ever in her sweet life, and deciding that breaking into the ice cream parlour was the best idea she'd ever had. Even if everything swam in tequila fumes and she couldn't keep down any of the ice cream-

-picking vicious briar roses and prickly pears, no shoes and bare handed, never mind her sore feet and ripped up hands and bleeding fingers-

-skinny dipping with Cat and Niamh and Alice, who cared? They didn't-

She stood on rooftops and crowed at the moon, turned cartwheels down the middle of the street, told people exactly what she thought they should be told, danced and shrieked until her feet bled and her voice went, listened to music so loud and violent it shook through her bones, overdosed on caffeine until she forgot her own name. She went without sleep. She went without food. And she did it all so she wouldn't have to feel.

-I could drown, if I stay here-

Worry. She could worry herself bone-thin, Cat had said before.