nothing else but my heart's desire [COLLECTION] | FINISHED

Shoes full of water - ORIGINAL PROSE

I sat in his car, that day, as he drove me home, as the pit pat of rain could be heard against the windows. It wasn't a very busy drive, we were one of the few cars on the road this late at night, we both also had work the next day, but something, somewhere inside us had spoke to us, had told us we needed to see each other.

Our relationship had been so rocky, what could be defined as one anyway, for neither of us had ever found the courage to ask the other if we wanted anything more, for fear of breaking what was already so fragile, for fear of ruining what remained of our broken relationship. We had started as friends, now it was hard to tell if we were even classified as friends anyway, much less anything else. It always seemed to end up that way, doesn't it? Somehow, some way, some big, dramatic event happens to force the romantic pair to speak about the things they don't wish to address, to address the elephants in the room, so cramped and crowded, its a wonder we could still see each other, could see look past all which defined our relationship in all the worst possible ways.

I had always seemed to be left with this feeling of extreme awfulness left in my chest, like my heart was in a permanent state of limbo, in a frozen state between normalcy and heartbreak, as though it had always been breaking, ever since we first laid eyes on each other. He seemed to hide heartbreak behind a façade, carefully-built brick walls, so high they were that no one, not even myself would ever be able to climb them.

I tried reaching out to him, to place my hand over his, as he pulled up to my home, as the rain poured so heavily outside, in what seemed the most perfectly ironic metaphor, something written and recorded by the greatest in poetic and literary minds, but none of them could have predicted how it would feel for things I had fought so hard for, for a love I had come to feel and had nurtured in my heart for so long, to fall apart in my hands like broken glass, for my tears to feel like hot lava as they begun to fall and did not stop. I could not let him see me in such a state, for he did not deserve to see how much his love had broken me in all the worst ways, yet still felt real, so much like the missing puzzle piece I had been searching for.

It was all I could do to open the car door and head for my home, the home where no one would be waiting for me, where I would find myself alone with any and every thought I had ever tried to push away. I did not turn back, though had said, though my voice as it begun to break and crack under pressure, before I left his vehicle for the final time, that I hoped he would find what he was looking for in life, because I couldn't be a part of it anymore at this rate. My shoes filled with water, my hair and clothes had been drenched from the rain, but it helped to disguise the intense wave of tears which fell and seemed as though they would never stop falling.

I hadn't seen how, as he drove away, tears seemed to fall as they would never done so while we were together, as he had never allowed himself to feel such things in the presence of the woman he loved. Why would he? Such things were not on the cards for men like him, for men who could not allow themselves to be vulnerable, who could not count on others to offer their shoulders in times of hardship. And so, as the days passed by and life continued on, as I was still there, my mind flooded with memories of what was and what could've been, as he wandered through life as though he were on autopilot, as though he were a member of the walking dead, as I had stood in the rain for what felt like several lifetimes, all I could do was think, feel, live, be as I had always been: in the shadow of a love which was not a love, which would never be love, which never was, which had only existed in my mind, which had been a blanket of protection in times of strife, but had been nothing more but smoke and mirrors.

But it felt not like that, it had felt real. But it wasn't real, but did that even matter? I couldn't tell, all that mattered to me was that I was lost, and without the one I had loved for what felt like all time. I slept, I ate, I showered, I went to work, I watched television, but none of it mattered. Why would it, if it wasn't with the one I loved more than life itself?