Hazy morning light spilled through the windows. The early sun, glowing and brilliant, lit his face like an illuminating candle. Motes of dust suspended in the air, frozen within the trailing light, shimmered, a story hidden behind their sparkle settled, resting on and inside everything around us.
He looked magnificent, perfect. He stirred slightly. I watched his eyes flutter like a sweet butterfly resting on a delicate flower opening with the morning sun’s promise of a thriving life, before our eyes met. A secret held deep within the depths of those azure eyes floated to the surface briefly, very briefly before vanishing. Kept locked away in his heart.
Faint whispers echoed through the room. “I love you” and “Forever” bounced from wall to wall taunting me. Reverberations dropped from the ceiling bubbling pain erupted inside me as the silent words dug deeper and deeper, burrowing their way through me. The faint ghost echoes floated through me, burning and eating away at my insides. I could feel his gaze, feel his thoughts, but they were unsaid, unspoken, just memories of a time long ago.
The pull of every emotion, every smile once shared tugged inside me trying to escape. I forced my feelings, my memories, and my truth as far down inside the hollow depths of my soul as I could. That was me: the liar, the used. I would never utter my true feelings to another soul. They were now secrets, traitorous secrets that were never to fall from my sealed lips. I was nothing more than a liar. I was the pretender.
My eyes, the sadness, and the uneven beat of my heart betrayed me. I knew he knew, but I also knew it would never matter. I was nothing, a no one. Every ounce of my blood longed for him, every beat of my heart beat for him. My dreams called out to him as he held me tightly through the night. Our body’s mingled together as one as we hid away under the covers. He was the liar. He was the pretender.
Soft kisses brushed my forehead, my cheeks, and my lips. His kisses enthralled me, exhilarated me. His breath slid inside my parted lips, tasting sweet and unforgiving. His warm hand caressing my back, my thigh, my stomach, every part of me, exposed my inner emotion. Up and down, colliding with each other, fighting until everything I felt was nothing more than a numb smoke, a disappearing fog. Emotions growing thicker, heavier until each second ticking by, drains away every essence of my life.
A sagged limp body remained in the wake of a beautiful, loved, happy… well who knows what I was. Like I said I was the pretender. I was lost among the false secrets untold and kept hidden from everyone.
My heart was a mess. Weeks, months… so much time had passed, and where was I? I was here, I was there, and yet I was nowhere. The faint lull of daylight scared me, the night that approached so fast broke me. I felt time was killing me. Unable to control the simple things: breathing, living, just being me, things distant and far away. They were long gone with no mention of their return.
I was a letter to be sent, the addressee unknown. No forwarding address. I was just lost. I force fake smiles onto my face. I plaster them on, I glue them, but they fade soon after I plant the smile harshly on my lips.
His eyes the night my life changed, so blank. He starred at me unseeing. I could hardly believe this was the man I’d fallen so in love with, the man I thought was different, the man I naively thought loved me.
I let my guard down. I knew better, but there I was standing before him, naked and ragged. I was me. In one quick fluid motion he pulled the shield I wore around myself away. With each strip of my invisible protection, the vulnerability was too much, but I couldn’t stop it. I loved him. He loved me. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The defending cloak spun away, unraveling with his tender touch. The unlovable had become the loved. Talk of a future I’d longed for but was too afraid to grasp was held out in front of me wrapped with a pretty pink bow of happiness. Silver shimmering perfection enclosed me. No one could believe the happiness that encompassed our faces. They were right. Behind his shinning eyes was nothing more than a fallacy.
Had he seen a broken girl, frail and fragile with blonde hair streaming with loneliness? Seen her blue eyes full of sadness as nothing more than a heart he could just rip away?
His name was full of a future, his name was home. A smile captured with the snap of a camera, painted us as a couple. But were we?
Before the wondrous love, I was a ship lost, held captive by the raging sea. My sails were tattered and torn, ruined. The swirling hurricane eating its way through the broken, abused ship left nothing more than a tangled mess on an unknown shore.
Each tear that has escaped my azure eyes brimmed with fear, eventually finds its way to an ocean, an ocean of lonely distressed tears. A vacant sky void of a moon and stars overlooks me. I’m not illuminant, a brilliant radiance that once poured from my skin ceased to exist the night he said good bye. Here I stand today, dark, shrouded in shadows. The beat of my heart falters, threatening to stop.
We lie together tangled with arms and legs. The truth seeps further and further away, soaking the bed but unseen to us. Far apart we hold each other. True I feel his warmth, the fake warmth. The words I love you are never spoken. It whispers and echoes inside my head, the madness is deafening. The words, the emotions are nothing either of us is willing to share. I’m too scared. Having him whether it’s fake or real matters not to me, I love his breath, his heart, and the smile kissing his lips.
Closed tightly with a binding seal, my lips will never open. My words flow unseen and unheard. On paper they fade, aloud they die. Being broken, never expressing things deep inside is a life I’ve always been accustomed to. Why change anything now? I was, I am, I always will be the unlovable, the unwanted.
I don’t possess the ability to hang onto things good. Rusted, Ruined, Buried, I stand on the sidelines watching the smiles, the love, all that I’ll never have. That’s just not me.
His words bore through me, opening cavernous canyons. The power of his words murdered me. My blood stains his hands. The crimson is invisible to all those who peer into his lying eyes.
We are apart, we are together, but what are we? Pretenders, we are the pretenders. We lie to each other, lie to ourselves. Two empty vessels grasping the other, trying to find something stable inside the other. But there is nothing there. Vast emptiness flows from tear filled eyes, tears that remain hidden, a secret.
Silence filled with unspoken words, feelings, and truths hangs suspended inside me cutting away my heart with silent daggers. I stand wrecked, ravaged, devoured, void of all life. I stand alone. His eyes pierce through me waiting to kill me, waiting to watch my body fall ragged to the ground, so he can finally be rid of me.
