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That’s my spot, asshole, I want to say, but I’m mute. Terrified. Who is he? What’s he doing here at this time of night? People sleep at night! I’m an exception though; I’m heartbroken.
😂😂😂
“It’s like lyrics without music.” I forge on. “It’s so easy to lose yourself in the beat of music, but lyrics keep you grounded. It keeps your mind active, you know. You have to pay attention, listen to it over and over to get its meaning, to read between the lines.” I nod, agreeing with my own analysis. “Yeah. That’s why I like poetry. Because of the words. They ground me.”
“That’s the best part.” I chuckle. “He’s like, the most unavailable guy out there.” He is my professor, an asshole, and he is married. This crush is triple doomed. Kara frowns at me and laces her fingers together on the desk. “I’m sorry. You lost me.” “Don’t you get it?” I spring up from the chair and pace. “It’s hopeless and I know it and I have no urge to date him. No urge, whatsoever. I don’t expect him to tell me he loves me because I don’t want him to and I know he won’t.”
He is like my personal moon—unattainable, to be admired from afar. He is my cancer, slowly killing me, and I don’t even mind.
It’s the story of my life packed into a neat, tidy script. Thomas and I, we share the same story. We might have gotten there differently, but now we share the same fate.
“Art is painful, Layla. It’s potentially dangerous. Explosive. It takes everything from you, sometimes more than you can afford. It’s a beast, and it’s always starving. You feed it and feed it…until you have nothing left.” He sucks in a breath. “But you don’t mind because you’d rather chase the high of creating something than live in darkness. It’s insanity.”
Sobs rack my body—guttural, animalistic sounds I don’t recognize, never thought I could even make. I never thought my chameleon heart could break this much. I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life.
Even as I think it, confession balloons up in my chest and rushes into my mouth. For a split second, I entertain the thought of telling him. Everything. Every single thing. It’s a novel feeling, completely alien and terrifying. I can’t. I can’t tell him what I did. He’ll hate me. But I like that. I need the accusation. Someone to remind me that I deserve to be shunned by my own mother. Tell me how bad I am, how pathetic and sick and insane.
all. I stay up late reading. There’s so much to discover, and I’ve been living inside this fog for so long. I feel like time is running out on me. I’ll probably die before reading all the books out there.
Fire-breathing eyes. I wonder why I didn’t notice it before. It’s so obvious now. They never fail to start a fire in my soul.
He was busy. He was silent. A hunched, unkempt man who stumbled more than he walked.
“Mm-hmm.” I nod and open my mouth to say…something, but it doesn’t matter what because I’m struck by a revelation, an epiphany. “We’re soul mates.” I can’t breathe, and at the same time, I feel light as a balloon. “Excuse me?” “Yes.” My eyes widen as everything slides into place. “That’s it. We’re soul mates.” “I… You… What?” “Oh, would you relax?” I can imagine the vein on the side of his neck pulsing. “Not the kind who end up together or live happily ever after. We’re not that kind of soul mates. Even I’m not that naïve. What I mean is, we understand each other. We’re similar—well, similar
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“Because unrequited love is like a dead, useless organ. It’s functionless. It’s sicker than a disease. You can cure a disease, but you can’t fix a defective soul.
Panting, I crane my neck up and stare at the top of her building. I can’t imagine her living anywhere else but at the top. She belongs in the sky. She belongs with the stars. She is bright and loud.
I glance away. It’s too hard to look into his eyes and find my old self reflected back. There are ghosts moving in the depths of them—my ghosts, but I don’t look like them anymore. I’ve changed. I’ve changed so much since the time he knew me. I’ve done things, despicable things since then. Then again, maybe I haven’t changed at all. I was crazy then. I’m crazy now.
Same gurlll, same.
I want to shake her, shout at her. In this moment, I’m so fucking jealous, so angry. She has everything that I want and she doesn’t even care.
Bravery is picking up a pen and writing. Bravery is gouging out words from inside you and then imprinting them on a page to make them permanent. Bravery is knowing they might not ever be read by anyone, that the art you leave behind, the contributions you make to the world, might never be known by anyone. Bravery is knowing all of that but doing it anyway.
