I hold the piece of paper, my hands trembling, tears leaking pitifully out of my eyes. The ink runs black with salty tears. I do my best to pat the spots dry and keep the last piece of him safe.
Don’t miss me. -Eric


I don’t feel anything, just a hollow, empty ache in my chest. Where was the beat of my heart? It’s too faint to tell if it’s even there. Suddenly the walls seem like they’re closing in. It’s too dark in this room, too hot. My hair is itchy on the back of my neck, and my clothes are too tight. The tears are blurring my vision.

A fog encompasses my brain, sending me in a drunken perception. I see rainbows of light, fragmented and scattered across the room like broken promises. Like the
promises he made and tore apart, piece by piece, burning the remnants to black sooty ashes. I pick up the ash and it runs through my fingers like hot sand, burning my skin and leaving a trail of ebony.

More hot tears. They mock the flushed skin of my cheeks and drip down to the floor, scattering across the bed and down onto the stretched fabric of my jeans. I place the paper under my pillow, and curl up under the warmth of the blankets.

I’m engulfed in scents of lavender, and him. His deep scent, scarce through the sheets and staining my nose with a painful memory. I hug my knees to my chest, trying to keep my heart from falling apart. Or maybe it wasn’t my heart, maybe it was just me. The pressure on my chest was the only thing keeping me from spilling out and all over the bed, overflowing onto the floor.

I cried and cried, until I couldn’t feel my eyes, and my body was the only thing keeping my mind from breaking free and floating far away into the slowly darkening sky. It was like a heavyweight, and I began to hate the dragging pull of gravity. Why couldn’t I just escape from these bonds of the air and fly like a fearless thought through the open night? It was like a prospect of happiness, just out of reach, but I was too tired to chase after the dream.

Then my eyes snapped open and the tears ran dry. A warm rush spread from the tips of my toes to my stomach, and brought heat throughout the icy loneliness in my chest. My bare feet hit the wood and my window was flung open by pale shaking hands. In a quick spur of the moment I grabbed the note and shoved it into my back pocket, feeling it’s weight against me. I stepped up onto the windowsill, shivering as a rush of cold air hit my skin and raised goosebumps on my bare shoulders and arms.

The naked limbs of a tree were spread to touch the pink sunset. My hands reached out to grasp the branches, and I swung myself out the window, closing it softly behind me. I breathed the clean air in deeply, feeling it burn my nose and throat and enjoying the only pain I could comprehend in my numb body. I leaped from the tree, my feet landing with a soft thump in the supple dirt. My legs were charged and shivering with a renewed energy. My feet pounded on the grass, dirt, and pavement as I ran. The cold wind whipped my hair back, and stung my ears. I welcomed the pain with open arms and drew in the cold breeze

With each pump of my legs I felt strength pour through my body, filling me with a touch of warm honey that melted my core. Just like his touch, the taste of his lips.

Tears came again, streaming down and leaping from my cheeks, caught in the wind and the speed of my sprinting. I felt drops hit my shoulders, too many drops, and they were not warm like my tears. Rain. It began to pour, like the sky was crying with me. My clothes stuck to my soaked skin. I wasn’t cold, I wasn’t warm. I wasn’t anything.

I kept running. I didn’t know where I was. Where was the sun? It was gone. Clouds everywhere. Grass beneath my feet. Thunder, in the distance, shakes the earth to it’s core. Stalks of tall grass and wheat tickled my arms. I see a barn. But most of all I see a light, high up in the sky. The rain is receding, dropping less and less against my drying skin. The moon thrusts lavishly through the smooth blanket of clouds, striking a resplendent pose and shining its radiant light on the spread earth around me. My strength gave out.

There was nothing. My eyes were black, my thoughts were black, I was black. Nothingness. I was in water. A pool. No, a black lake. The water squeezed my chest, forcing the oxygen out of my lungs. I struggled, fought to the surface. With each stroke of my quickly tiring limbs, I merely lowered into the water. Something had my foot, sucking me back down into the watery depths. There was no life. There was no sound. There was no me.



“Why should I kiss you?” she says, tucking a lock of golden hair behind her ear.

“Because you’ve fallen for me as hard as I have for you,” he whispers. “I can see it in your eyes.”

And those crystal clear eyes close slowly as he leans in, his lips touching mine like a whisper among the leaves.


My eyes snapped open, my chest pumping up and down as I inhaled the cool air. My head pounds. The watery sky stretched above me, picturesque, like someone had dipped a fat brush in blue watercolor and stroked the canvas. White clouds scattered, stretched and pulled, fading to just a white smudge in the paint. I stared, unable to move my body. My limbs were thick, my heart was thick, my thoughts were thick, muddled, confused.

I was alone.