The War of Heart and Mind

“She gives me butterflies, I’m in love, oh I’m in love.” The snowy doves make their way up towards the stars, sending a message of dreams coming true. The sun is bright and the sky is a brilliant baby blue, filling the flowers with the greatest of joy, a scattering of ambers and greens; each as dazzling as each other. No rain has fallen for a few months. What reason does it have to? It felt as though it would never fall again.

Silhouettes and puppets form pirouettes before my eyes, a mockery of life in every way imaginable as their cackles uproot the evening sun. The golden beams attack each fibre of my being. 

I can feel the splintering wood under my bare thighs, a solid apparatus. My slim fingers begin to shake, questioning themselves out of existence until they too disappear. 

My eyes, my eyes, my eyes. 

Each delicate eyelid colliding with one another to fold into one; unison. Concealment of flesh so carefully done that no one could decipher the beginning from the end. Wrinkles erupt in spiralling patterns away from the crinkled line of fake to empty smiles. Rows on rows of teeth are jammed so tightly together the wind makes a poetic whistle every time my lungs deem themselves worthy of drawing a breath. In and out the insignificant alveolus had instructed me, attempting to cater to my every need — ignoring my response that I was done trying. 

She’s so beautiful, there’s never even an inkling of doubt within my mind that she’s the one for me. The fresh air renews my bones, satisfying my lungs and making my mind ride a sweet kind of high.

My eyes snap open in a flickering of sapphire jewels and I stare so numbly at the sight unfolding before me. An ocean of colours, so deeply rooted up in the heavens, a splattering of orange and pink hues, they streak across the sky, and for a moment I yearn. But in the past that had only brought me pain. In the past, I had only lived to let myself be used and deal with the shattering of my glassy soul later. The sunset reminded me of her. I could see the outline of her figure, so small and precious, running through a meadow, the sun painting her into a beauty. It was the aesthetic we bonded over, throwing ideas toward the wind in the hopes that it could conjoin our very hearts. But hearts… If ever you’ve seen one, are a lot more complicated than the familiar geometric shape. They are a mess of blood oozing around the chambers and arteries twisting like thorns out of the organ designed to keep you alive. 

So I stared at that sinking sun. Because it made me feel something. 

You may not know it in your own life, but feeling agony can sometimes be better than feeling nothing at all. 

It is so easy to feel, so easy to exist as my arm brushers hers. She falls and I run to her side, a hand around her waist to protect her against the world. My precious girl.

I wanted to scream until it shreds that stupid heart into pieces. My heart. I wanted to pluck up the spoon that lay so close and stab again and again until it buried itself in my skin, wrenching in deep enough to lift up a single rib, exposing the fragile slab of meat that kept me alive. And once I had felt the very source of my being so fragile, so vulnerable, I would take it by the neck and rip it out. Refuse the things it desired the most, make it unable to feel again because all it does is let me down. 

You should not deign to love someone who can never be what you desire.

I know all the facts. But they swirl and evaporate into the sunny mist above my head. Her lilac voice with the slight, lilting accent reroutes my determination, sending me catapulted to phase one. I decided within myself that you are no good. That if you ever whisper a word of returning us to that God forbidden place, I would decline, stating that I no longer walk the realms for you, that I now have dignity and respect for myself, so much so that I know when I’m going to get hurt. But no. I cannot. 

I see your hazel eyes and watch my resolve disassemble after it took so much time to build up. 

Water droplets slide down her spine, taking their time to caress her skin before falling back into the body of water. I want to know that feeling as the air around her does, I want to hold her.

You are not the fairytale I wanted, the one every child dreams of. You and I are performing a waltz for the sake of others, to prove that we can move as one entity, to pretend to the rest of the world that we are on the same level, but I step on your toes and you trod upon my own. You must know that my toenails grow weak from being crushed beneath your cruel missteps. You do not know of the spell you allure me with. You do not know of the harm you are doing but how could I tell you? All I may express is my undying devolution. A comment on my declination of mentality. You and I seek each other out as we await the real thing. 

I am lucid dreaming, I know of every move I make and every word I say. Oh, the effects it yields. “I understand.” Of course, I do, I just get so locked up in the prison within my skull, the endless trap I keep resetting for myself, pouring on that bait which I know will forever draw me in. Hope. Logic tells me it shall never prevail but here I am, running after it. How many burn marks and miscellaneous scars will it take for me to let go of those who do not love me the way I wish they did? Am I that much the fool, that amount desperate that I would alleviate myself after heartbreak only to reach a summit and observe the clear days ahead but then let myself fall and plummet back down to Earth? Break my silly neck as I clamber over a new obsession, bones broken and scraping along the concrete floor as they drag my rickety flesh sac over to her, begging her to say just one word that will reassure me I’m on the right track when the light of truth suddenly radiates the truth that this was never the case?

I’m prepared to wait, I will always wait for the affection my heart holds for the wild and passionate soulmate I have begun to know.

Erotomania? Romanticisation? Believing, yearning, longing so much for love that when someone so much as offers up a feeble compliment I’m ready to realign the stars in the hopes that it would please them. I know we’re not real. It’s just mighty fine to believe it for just one evening. The sun droops lower within its bodice, sensing defeat.

In my dreams, I turn towards you and kiss those velvet lips.

You could be anyone.

I am in love with you.

I simply long to be in love so much that I made it so.

The light dies with an anticlimactic slump, plunging my world into darkness with nowhere for my jittery arms to seek comfort. They strike themselves along the wooden bench, every bit the way flint would be struck against steel. In the charcoal night, I had come to realise, I would have to create my own sanctuary of light if I was to survive. I could no longer rely upon others to bring me happiness when all they do is let me down. 

I must be what I have always sought. 

I must be me; a star. 

The one thing that still shines within the reaches of darkness. 

No moon that orbits around the Earth, abiding by someone else’s rules. 

No, I must live for me.