Love Song (unfinished)

She can feel the words beneath her skin and like an animal, she lets them ravage her from the inside out. His words are never true but the venom they bring strikes a chord within her and for a moment, it is all she knows. It is all she believes.

His words are cold, heartless even as they snake their way into her brain and she falls weary to their sound. As they reverberate through the air, she falls victim to their bite. She lays curled up on the cold concrete with blood leaking from her veins, wondering how it all went wrong.

She didn't know what it was that brought her back again. Maybe the honesty in his eyes or the softness of his skin; the way his voice sounded as he whispered I love you in soft affectionate ways. It was as if, by some miracle unbeknownst to either one of them, they'd fallen into this routine already. One she'd deny time and time again as if it were that easy to ignore. As if she hadn't always made this mistake.

And it was the same every time before. No matter how the words sounded, how their edge bit into her skin and tore at her heart, the words I love you mended every wound they'd ever made.

There were times that she was happy and that was all she knew.

But as she laid alone examining her life like an astrologer studied stars, she was cautious enough to know that the past, like the stars, never, ever change.

Her eyes snap open. His footsteps scrap across the pavement. Time does not exist and her breath catches in her throat.

All she can think now is I hope to god he does not scream.

To alter my future, she whispers, I have to forget my past.

Prologue

I see myself caged in, like I've been here all my life stuck at the bottom, clawing my way out til I remain motionless, scared to hear how heavy the silence really is.

"It's not that bad," The conversation throws me back into reality again as my mind floods, trying to remember what the hell we were even talking about. He flicks open the bic and lights the end of the cigarette quick and then - snap - shoves it back into his pocket. As he exhales, we watch the smoke curl up into the air and disappear off into oblivion as night stretches on and seems to last forever.

"People break up all the time! It happens." He shrugged as if it was so easy and I smiled just to get him away from me. My insides felt sick, like I had to rip them from my body just to feel better. I put my head against the back of the brick building and closed my eyes to the floating scene before me and wished it all away.

I spent a lot of time like this, locked inside my head forced to watch the proceedings as they follow, unsure of what the right move is or if it even existed in the first place. I see myself in varying shades of gray. I am never black or white, I am void of any definable color and it shows everywhere I go, like a cloud that will never pass. I keep it on the inside, these emotions that battle and rage on inside me, and like a soldier I keep pacing up and down the battlefield as if I'll find the remains of some wreckage left inside me, something to hold to, just this once, if only for a moment.

I find nothing and move on. The battle continues around me and I watch the bodies fall to the ground one by one until I'm left on the field, with the wind, cold and heartless, snapping at my back. I pull my jacket tighter, hoping to hold on to some heat but as the sky darkens, the temperature begins to drop and I'm left wondering how it all went wrong.

Memories curl up and explode inside me as if they've waited forever just to play inside my head like a slide show, and I do all I can just to erase them, ignore their existence and hope they rid themselves of all the happiness they keep.

But life is never simple and very rarely, is it every fair.

"Hey! Earth to Zoe!" Jeff waved his hand in front of my face until I could focus in on what he was saying.

"Can you come back into orbit for me?" I smiled briefly and looked off into the field below us and watched the children as they ran and ran, chasing each other from one end of the park to the other, laughing all the while as time wore on and crept into dusk.

"Yeah, yeah, Houston, I'm here, I'm here." I didn't realize for the longest time that I had my hand on my stomach, wondering what it would be like to feel the first kick. How I'd feel hearing the first cry or the first laugh. I spent my whole life second guessing myself, now I'd spend the rest of it worried about someone else, terrified for someone else. I don't know that anyone is ever really ready for it, they just hope to god they do okay, but I wasn't sure where I stood, who I was, where I'd be in ten years let alone nine months. It was all too much at once, and no one knew a thing.

I lay shattered among an endless sea of faces and I feel like I am drowning in what lays before me. I hope it will not weaken me. I am not ready to just give up just yet.

"Let's go." I whispered, but Jeff was already gone.

I wondered, for a moment, if he'd ever been there at all...

1

The coffee cup grows cold in her hand and she finds herself swallowing the bitter liquid with spite. If she could just wake up without caffeine, maybe she would think the world is a better place. She stands up, stretches, then sits back down again completely unconcerned with the scene before her. Shes witnessed a thousand just like this, and every time it gets a little easier to stomach. She feels invincible, like she can deal with anything.

The attendant screams.

"Its only blood," She murmurs to him as he hides in the corner, bawling his eyes out to the elevator music playing overhead.

Its only blood and there's a lot of it she thinks as she calls in back up and attempts to get the man off the floor without damaging evidence. He shakes his head repeatedly denying the gore in front of them with so much force she gave up and left him lying there in a pool of his own salty tears.

When the lieutenant arrives, she grabs a pack of Marlboro Reds, throws some change on the counter and walks out like nothing ever happened.

That's how she lived her life and nothing was ever going to change that.

Not even blood.

*