White Lace Dress
She had not always been so broken, you know. She used to know how to breathe.
She still remembered those days when she was just the little girl who wanted to carry the entire world in the pocket of her white lace dress.
Her mother told her she was made out of love and butterfly kisses; her father said she was born from the ashes of a star.
She believed them, back then. But that was before she realized she lived in a world where everyone dressed in white lies and carried smiles laced with bitterness.
And she was no different. When she scraped her flesh and bone away, she found that she too, bled crimson tears.
Her blood smelled of rust and sin.
Silent
I was too tired to write yesterday; I am too sick to write today; I will be too old to write tomorrow. But mostly, I am too afraid to write nowadays.
Just last week, I strolled through the streets hoping to fall upon a vision. I scoured the park for lazy metaphors and window-shopped for similes. But I did not find personification on the groaning bridge, and I could not capture the oxymoron in the city’s nature.
So I left the silent city for my silent home, my hands empty and my mind lost.
I returned with even less than I began with, for my bag had torn without my notice — I must have spilled commas and confusion all through the town.
There was nothing else to be said.
Falling
She always had bruises on her knees.
When people asked her about it, she would simply smile and tell them she was born graceless — that while everyone else danced across their dreams, she stumbled.
And it was true, really. She had always been so careless, fumbling past memories and slipping through moments.
Most of all, she was clumsy with her heart. She fell far too quickly and too often into the depths of love.
But there was never anyone waiting to catch her.
Drenched
The rain had slowed to a lazy, almost playful, drizzle.
Normally, she would not have minded the tiny droplets that trickled down her bangs and grazed past her nose. But today, this was too much. Even the sky was pouring the last of its gloom onto her.
Her day had started off fairly plainly — alarm ringing at 9:00, hitting the snooze button until precisely 10:04, stumbling out of bed moaning about how loud the people upstairs were… why, her morning had been remarkably unspectacular.
But the moment she chose to go downstairs and collect the pile of unread mail that had been mocking her all week, the workaholic in the wrinkled gray suit who lived across the hall decided to storm into the lobby, hot coffee in one hand, briefcase in the other, muttering angrily into his phone. Of course, this was nothing new, so she nodded awkwardly at him before inching past his ramblings. Pity she could not dodge that burning liquid he flung out of his cup; his frustrations landed directly upon her.
And after she had changed, cursed the workaholic in the wrinkled gray suit who lived across the hall, and deemed herself ready to face the universe once more, it happened again.
The brunette across the street whose boyfriend was cheating on her threw his clothes out onto the sidewalk (because that is how they do it in the movies, you know), and somehow, that heartbreak splashed right onto her.
That old lady who was late to brunch? Well, she could drive like the wind. And she just so happened to steer her stress through a puddle. But this was quite alright, for it merely jumped out and drenched the poor unsuspecting girl who was busy drowning in a pile of old sweaters and dirty socks.
And she was doused by some anger, this time slightly tinged with melancholy, along with a few drops of remorse, two more times after that.
It was almost as if the world had decided that she would be a puddle for today, and everybody simply dumped all of their woes into her.
She wrung out her hair for the fifth time that day.
The acrid scent of despair never truly left her.
Nightfall
Mother always told me to sleep on my back. After all, our minds were freed from rule and expectation during the night.
“Lie still,” she would say. “Sleep is a time for us to find the smiles we had lost in the day.”
And sometimes, as the world grew quiet, I could almost see my thoughts tracing stories into my heart, mending the fissures reality left in its wake. I felt myself lingering in the spaces between past and possibility, where people strung hope around their words and created their own happily-ever-afters.
I used to believe that the day’s tears and desperation could not follow me into the night; I used to believe that I could hang my soul up in the gentle grasp of the stars and clouds without fear. But that was before I realized how quickly my dreams could be broken by reality.
I have come to understand that I cannot escape the nightmares that have overtaken my spirit. I have been blinded by misery’s touch, cursed by an absolute darkness.
Mother was wrong — the night held no freedom.
I slept on my side now. I kept my heart hidden, buried under forlorn memories.
It was no matter, really. I no longer had any smiles to lose.
