pillars, darling of mine

overcome it, tell me! i know you will.

Two anonymous individuals sit in a room colored similar to bone, a shoddy air vent bustling loudly as they converse only a week apart from one another. Eavesdropping, we're merely outsiders intruding on a topic as it passes through their minds and manifests itself into reality before us.

"You've mentioned this...person. You bring them up when we run out of topics and worship them as some sort of romantic interest in your life, yet now you've suddenly dropped them from your lips altogether?"

The worshipper darts his sight across the room and bullets visions to the vent buzzing into his ear reminiscent to cicadas. No, Cicadas. It reminds him of Cicadas. Not cicadas. Cicadas. His perfect plan to sway the observer's conversation emerges from the depths into fruition as he spouts,

"It looks like cicadas in here."

What? how does it look like cicadas in a drab, off-white room? Surely he meant to say sounds, it'd be an impossibility for it to look similar to cicadas in such a boring space.

The observer chimes in, "It sure sounds like cicad-"

"YES! That's what I meant, I'm sorry."

"-as."

The observer stares at him now, their beady eyes glimmering into his soul as to dispel lies and unravel the truth from his tightly-guarded being. The worshipper makes no effort to stare back yet feels their view pounding a presence upon him as he traces the lines with each tile on the flooring using his sight. He presumably prefers to avoid looking back at his interrogator, not a very confrontational body.

"I know--I know the, you of all people know the truth is hard for me to say-"

"Yes."

"-Which means it's even harder when it's a topic I'm not ready to confront, but I'll do it for you because I feel safe here, I feel safer in this institution, wherever the hell this really is, than I ever could've outside. I wish I could live here forever-"

"Sorry, I know we interrupt each other a lot, but time is running out honey. What're you trying to say?"

He finally takes a quick glance at them, observing their facial structure from jaw to forehead, then slips back down.

"We broke up, and I'm scared to say it but It's been a couple of days and I already don't think I'll be moving on from something like this anytime soon. They made me feel safer than ever before, y'know? I haven't felt this way about another human ev--well, I've had like, other partners, but not of them made me feel like THIS. I felt like I could have the motivation to do anything, to live and be anything I wanted as long as it was with them. And then it all just ended, it all just ended before Christmas too. The worst part, oh my god, the worst part is that it isn't even something that I could've controlled or stopped. It's not like I fucked up and we got into an argument and that's how it ended or anything, it ended from terms neither of us could control. and that's what hurts the most. It hurts the most because the love was obviously still there, we were the right people for each other, it just wasn't the right time. Which also begs the question, if we were the right people for one another then why do we have to move on and find new people? Why can't we just wait, y'know what I mean? But--but don't like, think I'm mad or anything because I'm not, I love them-"

"loved."

"-loved them, it's just that this is so hard to accept and bare that I just don't want to accept it. I don't want to come to terms with this. I want to wait until it's the right time, but I know I can't. God, it hurts so bad."

Silence fills the room after the worshipper finishes his speech. The observer looks at the pile of papers on their lap and starts writing a couple of unintelligible sentences before standing with haste and physically rushing the worshipper and themselves out of the room.

I don't know where they went after that conversation, I couldn't care less really. But sometimes, It feels nice to be a fly on the wall and hear about other people's struggles. Makes you feel less alone.