Shattered Stained-Glass

Yet another minute ticks past on the clock. My eyes never leave the pile I had composed of objects sitting on my bedroom floor. I spot a collection of handwritten letters, and the writing is so small I can barely read it. We used to laugh about that. There are cards, gifts. A picture frame. The ring of dust it left in its wake still sits proudly on my bedside table. A hoodie, three sizes too big for me. It’s obviously not mine.

 A matching necklace set; the other one is in the hands of someone else. I can’t bring myself to empty the contents into a box and shove it to the back of my closet and ignore it for weeks and weeks until I forget it's there. I’ll find it eventually, during spring cleaning, maybe. It’ll hurt, and send a pang through my chest for just a second, before I put the cardboard box back and forget again. I want to forget it already. 

Removing the heart from his contact name in my phone had been hard enough. I had already curled up on the shower floor at just the thought of it, water and tears mixing into one pity-filled liquid.

The pictures still sit in my recently deleted file; no matter how long my finger hovers over the final button, I can’t make myself press it. Maybe later. 

His voice had been so cold, ringing out from my phone speaker. The static didn’t mask his lack of compassion, though. Even as I swallowed down tears painfully, and stayed silent in the hopes of staying calm, his eyes didn’t move from the screen. He ended everything I had ever dreamed of like he was giving a school presentation, reading his lines off of a poorly concealed notecard. 

Maybe that’s all I was to him - a project. Something to love and cherish and work with until he was bored and time was up and I could be thrown out without a second glance. 

“Let's stay friends, okay?” as if he hadn’t just torn out my heart and left it on the cold floor. I could still hear it beating, faintly. The blood stopped pumping when he ended the call, though. It was short-lived. 

His small handwriting is still glaring at me from across the room. Mocking me, letters morphing into things like “you should have seen it coming,” and “how could you be so blind?” For now, I’ll choose not to touch them. The cardboard box can wait. 

I haven’t hurt like this in a long time. By the time I fell asleep that night, my eyes had memorized every crack and bump in my bedroom ceiling. Even though my head was pounding and my sinuses were clogged, my brain still captured every little detail and refused to let them go. Maybe it was grasping onto anything, because I had nothing. He was it. My brain didn’t want to believe I was alone all over again, and couldn’t possibly understand that chipped paint in an old house was not good company. 

Maybe I've just finally snapped out of a dream, one that had been crafted by large, tan hands that were calloused from years of playing the guitar. Hands that always wanted to be adorned with my cheap rings that he claimed resembled brass knuckles. I don’t know those hands anymore. 

I tended to fall asleep wearing rose-tinted glasses, watching our time spent together through a lovely pink filter. That’s the worst part, maybe. That none of our dreams had been tainted by anything other than sunlight, streaming in like we were in a stained-glass chapel. Maybe that's why those calloused hands shaking me awake had felt so sudden. 

I can’t seem to find my rose-tinted glasses anymore. Maybe he’s stolen them with quick fingers and hid them somewhere out of reach. He was always taller than me, after all. 

And so I've given up looking for them in my phone’s contact names and the cardboard box of sunlight-filled memories, and instead devoted every ounce of what I have left to staying awake. 

Maybe I’ll watch his new dreams through sunken, tired eyes and the stories I painfully ask my friends to recount. We both know for a fact that we will never be close again, but I can still try. Even if he places a firm hand on my chest and pushes me miles and miles away, he will never leave the back of my mind. I can’t scratch the memories and stories out of my brain no matter how hard I try. So I might as well smile through gritted teeth and pretend to be happy for him. One of us has to do it. 

And so my pillowcase will become familiar with late-night tears and muffled sobs, and will get to know me almost as well as he did. My head could rest on it for hours, but it will never witness me rest again. 

I’m far too scared to let myself dream anymore, let alone fall asleep. I don’t think I could stand it, if yet another hand-crafted dream turned out to be fake. I don’t dare to ever set foot in another stained-glass chapel, even if he is waiting at the door for me in a suit and tie, like he did at our first school dance, like I hoped he would once more.  

I can’t fall for a dream like that again, I refuse to. 

So I find company in my cracked bedroom ceiling. I've become quite close with every rough edge and chip of yellowish-white paint. The rings under my eyes grow and grow and bloom and blossom like a flower, but there is nothing pretty about them. Not even the new shade of purple they have reached, one that could put a lilac to shame. 

I don’t look at my reflection long enough to notice, though. All I know, at this point, is to not fall victim to another dream, and what better way to do that than by never falling asleep.