growing wings | Completed

15. always corrupted

     why does she look at me like i am no one else? yet treats me like everyone else?

     why do her eyes soften and radiate comfort when they settle on my bitter coffee eyes and wistful face?

      why?

      i still don't understand why she does not remember, why does she not remember when we were younger, lively and eyes full of delight?

     why was there no recognition when she looked at me across the café, or underneath the blanket of night? 

      why?

      yet i still do. all she remembers is that i live across. a phone call away. within a heartbeats reach.

     and perhaps, it's better this way.

      it's better to be strangers that care a little too much about each other, hearts overfilled with inevitable trust,

      the next day, late in the evening of december, she had called me, her voice static, yet so smooth, like a lullaby i forgot the words of,

      "ezra,"

     my name is poison on my lips, yet on hers, as it curls from her tongue, it seems like a cure.

      "i need to talk about, well, me. you said if i ever needed to, i could talk to you. so well, here i am," there is a tremble in her voice, like a minuscule crack in a dam i knew very well would break.

      "what's up?" i wish i could intertwine my words with the same feeling my heart bleeds, i wish my mouth did not fumble with letters and spew anxiety.

      "i don't feel well. i don't feel good at all, lately, and i'm sure it's hard to notice but - "

      "i can tell. why do you think i asked you to talk to me?" i pause, my words like a knife to flesh.

      "is there anything that happened that might have made you like this?" there is no emotion in my words, and i wish i could fill them in, 

      but there is no color in my world, so why should i have to paint hers?

      i am selfish, aren't i?

      "that's the thing, i just.. don't know,"

      don't know, or won't tell me? perhaps i'll never know.

      and that night, i listened as much as i could, to her spill her worries onto me, for she is the waves of this dark ocean.

       and i all i can do is listen.

      who am i to help her?

      who am i to tell her any advice?

      i cannot even fix myself, i cannot even listen to anything my mind says, because all i hear is silence ringing in my ears, and tears blurring my line of vision, and lies are coated on my tongue.

     my tongue that is slowly turning black, black like the dark ocean she is turning into.

      my hands are shaking, trembling, anxious from these thoughts that creep up my spine, and blossom like flowers into my mind.

      the cigarette that i have left forgotten seems like it is burning my headspace, like a constant reminder of what i should do if i lose control.

      and while she hung the call, all i could think of was how if she told me she wanted to hang me,

     i'd gladly accept the noose, and decorate it around my neck.

       perhaps my adoration is infatuation. 

      young love is always corrupted with weeds, for flowers fall to them easily.

      and now that idea has been rooted stuck, all i can believe is that she keeps giving, and i keep taking and that infatuation is a beautiful thing.

      for it is encrusted around my heart, like shining jewels.

      - always corrupted