drift // complete

i

Falling. Falling, falling, falling.

All she could feel. The only word she knew for a long, long time.

She didn't feel alive, most days. Most days she felt like a leaf in fall, lying on the sidewalk.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Everybody walked over her, crushing her little by little.

At some point, she stopped caring. She doesn't remember when that happened. When everything seemed so stupid. When everything started losing its colour.

She walked. Her head was never really there. She stared off into the distance and the world around her became blurry. She stopped seeing. She stopped wanting to see.

The blurs comforted her. Scared her, too. Made her feel like she was the only real person on earth.

Or maybe she wasn't real. Maybe she was in a coma and she'd wake up in a hospital bed.

Maybe she was dead. That would make sense.

She did things she regretted. She told people she loved them when she didn't. Hopped around boys like trampolines, bouncing off one after another, never staying still.

Until.

Until one day.

One day she felt good. Good enough to smile for real and to actually look at the people around her. She noticed. She watched. For a few hours, she felt free.

She saw somebody who made her chest burn. Whose face made her sad.

She didn't know the person. Never really tried to learn their name.

The next day, she stopped again. Her heart felt like it wasn't beating and she couldn't hear herself breathe.

She fell back into routine, into blobs of colour for people she never cared to really see.

She was never really good at remembering faces anyways.