The Fabric of Our Souls

by K.M. Moronova

Wynn I was born with a bad heart. Literally and figuratively. I’m the cold-hearted villain in everyone’s story, according to most of my loved ones, while ironically also having a heart condition that will eventually kill me.

I want to die. There—I said it. Does it change anything? Does it shock anyone, the people who secretly knew but continued to call me things like evil, a miserable bitch, a monster? The answer is no, probably not, maybe mildly. Sometimes the darkness inside me thinks that this is what they’ve wanted all along—for me to finally give in.

I’m burning inside, and it hurts. I just want to stop hurting. I should’ve built my walls of cement like his. I’ve tried vulnerability and stupid, senseless love. I often wonder if I’d be different if I hadn’t. Now my walls are impenetrable—no one gets in, I don’t go out.

I notice a woman in a blue dress dancing in the downpour. My heart thumps at the magic she seems to feel. She doesn’t appear to carry the chains of the world that I feel weighing me down. I want that freedom.

I don’t tell Lanston that I found something I hadn’t been looking for and that she’s here too, somehow. Fate can be funny like that—if you believe in those kinds of things.

I clench my hands in my hoodie pocket. It’s hard to hear others talk about their darkness. It hurts. But more than anything, I resonate with it.

Even my dreams bring me no peace, no ease from my long, dreary days. If anything, they make things worse. Sometimes I dream so vividly that I’m more exhausted when I wake up than I was when I fell asleep.

The rain stopped thirty minutes ago, but the moisture is still heavy in the air. I like that about rainy days. The weight makes me feel like it’s okay to be down. No one judges you if you’re sad on a rainy day.

She’s beautiful. If I let her, she’ll break my heart a million times until she can no longer find a weak spot in my armor.

It’s a feeling that’s as painful as it is freeing. When I’m emotionally detached, everything is easier, because nothing matters. Even if I were to die, it would not matter. But the second sorrow is able to burrow its way into my bones, I’m more melancholic about the defining moments in my life than I ever thought possible.

Pain is what inevitably brings this song to life… because no great piece of art is made without a little suffering backing it.

It was beautiful, but not on the inside. The music is lovely, but the havoc of playing corrupts my mind like poison snaking into what’s left of my shell.

Though they all hurt and damaged me in unique ways, I think one was worse. One broke me, unlike the rest. One made me realize that perhaps death would be the only cry loud enough to be heard.

I was born with a bad heart—literally and figuratively. But you gave your heart to me, and because of you, I will live. Because of you, I will never take my life for granted ever again.