Fallen

Once, there was a boy who sang sad songs and drank his troubles away. He smoked to make the pain go numb, even if it meant the rest of him felt numb, as well. He used angel dust to find the confidence he couldn’t seem to grasp on his own, and the things that kept him up at night, he would put into lyrics and strum them with cut fingers in acoustic on his guitar. I can’t believe someone like him would ever say hi to me, would ever think I’m pretty, or want to see how my mind works.

I’ll look over at him sometimes just to look at his face and catch his gaze. Blue eyes. He stares a lot. Feels like his eyes can pierce right through my soul, looking past me like I’m a ghost. I ask him what he’s thinking about as often as I can, even though I know he’ll tell me “nothing,” but I don’t buy it. He’s always thinking and overthinking, always mulling things over and always second-guessing everything he hears or sees. Poor lost, broken boy. He claims he loves everyone because love is worth the chance of loss, but I don’t buy that either. He’s locked himself away so tightly no one will ever be able to reach him again. Not with their good intentions, kind words, or acts of salvation for his withered bones and tarnished beliefs. Those stone walls he put up will be the death of him, I just know it.

I think about him a lot.

I want to be with him, for I know when I’m not my soul aches for his. I want to always be there to bring him happiness, to find the strength he could muster, and, most of all, to hear him sing. For when he sings, I can hear his hurt, like it's leaving his body and can’t control him any longer. The tattoos that mark his skin with their colours and secret meanings bring him so much joy, he illuminates from within when asked about them. I wonder if he looks that way when he talks about the girl in his life who he loves endlessly. I wonder if he’s so proud to call her his that he brags about her to all who’ll listen. Lucky girl. I hope she’s gentle with him. I hope she knows she is fire and he is paper willing to dance too close to her, and that, if she moves too fast or burns too brightly, he will become engulfed and die out faster than she could say his name. But who am I to talk? She may be the fire, but I am water and everyone knows fire and water are just as futile.

Stupid, silly girl, for falling in love with someone incapable of loving you back is suicide. He’ll never write a song for you. You’ll never be his whole world. If he was a habit, he would be ecstasy and you’d be an addict. He made you fall so deep down the rabbit hole, there’s no returning to a normal life afterwards—there’s only him. You’re a butterfly caught in his net, unable and so very unwilling to escape. You are completely and utterly his, and so what if you are? His eyes have landed on another and have only glanced merely at you. You are the girl by his side, but not the one on his arm. It’s a scary thing to let go of what we know, of what we love, but all broken pieces will find their way, eventually.

For storms will end and flowers will bloom again.