pieces.

coats.

It's really late-the kind of late where no one is out, not even the college students at bars, not even the street performers. No one in their right mind is out this late, especially when it's this cold. No one is out wandering the streets for a piece of sanity, a sampling of sense. No one is out, except for her.

It's not like she lives in a large city or anything, and it's not like she'd just go wandering the streets this late, alone, in the dark, in some city. She may be going insane, but that doesn't mean she lacks all forms of common sense. The darkness is somewhat comforting, as if it's a person that's blanketing her in a piece of herself over and over until she no longer feels anything. That's all she wants anymore: to be numb, to not feel.

Recently, the only times she ever feels numb is when she thinks of an escape, when she thinks of the bottle of pills on the counter, or the bathtub she could drown herself in. She isn't afraid of death anymore. She wants to die. Sometimes, when she's in bed and her heartbeat thumps louder than the ticking clock, she wishes it would just stop. She wishes she could press pause and rewind back to before everything went to hell, back to February which wasn't as cold as it seemed, back to when she was still in love and she wasn't her own worst nightmare.

She pulls the sleeve of her coat over her fingers as she crosses her arms across her chest. The streets are dead and empty, the street lights are beginning to twitch on and off. She pulls the fabric through her fingers and rubs her hands together, sighing. She was wearing this coat when she first met him. She was wearing this coat when he called her beautiful. She was wearing this coat when she fell in love with him, when he walked her home from the tea shop. She was wearing this coat when it was raining and he gave her his umbrella. She was wearing this coat when he told her he didn't love her. She was wearing this coat when he broke her heart. She was wearing this coat when she told him she never wanted to see him again, even though she knows she did. She was wearing this coat when winter faded into spring, when she missed him more than she thought she could miss another human being.

She was wearing this coat when it began. She was wearing this coat when it ended. She studies the stitches, as if each memory is its own piece of torn fabric and fringe falling apart and breaking off. She fell in love with the person that he wasn't, and when she realized he was someone he wasn't, it was her fault. But it was nice living in a daydream, it was beautiful when they were something they wanted to be. It was nice being wanted. It was beautiful being needed. Except she wasn't needed or necessary, she was just a piece of fabric he was stringing along in the coat of his fucking life.

He was a daydream. Something unrealistic, something fake, something that would never happen. Something she could never see happening to her. Daydreams don't become reality. That's why they're dreams.

She was a nightmare. Something broken, tainted, scarring. Something that only came out at night and scratched at your mind and clawed at your sanity. Something that made you want to forget, something that made you want to wake up. Maybe that's why he'd left her, because she was just tearing him apart like she did herself...but she knew she couldn't fix herself, and maybe that's why she wanted to fix him. So he wouldn't fade into this eclipse that she had too.

She wanted to save him, even though he wouldn't have saved her if he'd known. She wanted to mend his broken pieces with her own...but broken pieces don't fix scars, they just create more. Maybe if she'd realized that he would hurt her, if she'd realize the jagged pieces of himself would break her skin, if she'd realized that you don't take more poisin to keep yourself from dying.

Back to March, when the beginning became the end

She stared at him, she was crying. Her eyes were red and his were unfazed. Words blurted their way out of her mouth loudly and harshly into his ears, and he didn't care. He didn't care that she was falling apart at the seams in front of him. He didn't care that she was hurt. He didn't care that he, the one who said he'd never want to hurt her, had brought her to the point in which she didn't want to live anymore. He made breathing dreadful for her. He made seeing scarring for her. He made living just another task that she didn't want to complete.