just when she’d thought rejection itself was the worst she could have gotten from him, it crushed her to know she wasn’t a person to be trusted. yet she couldn’t blame him. she was just as skeptic. she wanted to hide herself, crawl into a hole and rot inside of it. the feeling of shame registering in her brain like a strong physical pain. imagine standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange places like other people’s passwords, each representing one more thing one would never get to see before they die, all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, ‘you are here.' 

and inexplicable feelings take on another level in the form of a desire to care less about it all. to loosen her grip on her life, to stop glancing behind every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from her before she could reach the end zone and to rather hold her life slackened, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play. she’d taken safe strides for this long only to wound up standing on a cliff’s edge. but in that same thought, she reckons her life’s routine even more stern before he happened with people reminding her how carefree she used to be and how carefree she had been recently, once again.

she wonders just what it is she could be doing wrong. how she was always backed into a corner with no one else to blame but herself. she’s only realizing now how low her self-esteem was in reality that she had to pick herself up often in jokes. it was pathetic — how she, who made fun of her own pain, was the culprit to a self inflicted misery.

it was her essence, so to speak. to be drawn to him. specifically him. for years, he was nowhere and everywhere. close yet far. like a distant star she wished upon when the dreary weather wasn’t clouting the skies at night. the boy who had a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the crevices of his mind was a door locked from the inside, a stairway that lead to a place she couldn’t fully explore because it was endless but didn’t point to nothing; a work of art. and a work of art is never meant to be finished, only abandoned. like a memory. but memories are only things of the past and he wasn’t one. he was right there. right in front of her. yet seemingly out of reach. he was silent and unmoved.

he was a force of nature. a black hole that sucked her in. a region which was meant to stay as it is — maddeningly unknowable. to her, or perhaps to anyone. no maps, no master key. no way of knowing exactly what to figure out or for starters, where she stood. what was she in his life? it was frustrating. each subsequent conversation was like entering a different passage, each a little closer to the finish line and then she’s lost again. back at the start.

the ache in her chest grew over the apologies he had thrown. not carelessly. he was gentle and that’s where the conflicting feeling stems from. the secretive and vague shell was pushed aside to share an endearing moment of honesty. she wasn’t upset despite the weak punches she hurled at him. she couldn’t be. part of her believed she had no right to feel what she felt but the other half of her was justifying, this is how it’s meant to be and in the odd mix was a rewarding feat. how strongly she had felt when she thought she wasn’t capable anymore. it seemed innocuous at the time but in the end, marked a diversion into a strange new era of her life. she was relearning how to live outside of the confined environment she willingly resided into.

his soft voice paired with his tender touch, cautious as if she was a flimsy creature. whether it was out of respect was unlikely to merit deliberation; the wolf within her had gone to slumber, the thunders subsiding and the waves turning calm. it was a first in a long time she’d savor the feeling of being cared for after all the time she feigned toughness and inhabited in self-reliance. how cruel was this fate. she was hurt and healed. now she was in his arms, though loosely, in the verge of tears so rare that he seemed to be a witness of each time.

she was urged effortlessly, raising her back up to face him, hands caressing her cheeks that burned and revealing beads of crystal tears that sat on the outline of her orbs. maybe this state was scary to him, so she breaks into a joke. “you really like making me cry, don’t you?” she laughs pitifully, pulling away from him to straighten herself up in her seat as she awkwardly gives herself a pat on the shoulder. “it’s okay. there’s a reason for everything.” and she sat still, exhaling to ease the sting. she could have walked out on him but she doesn’t know what she was waiting for. maybe she just needed a moment.

maybe this is how they figure it out.