It's So Quiet

WARNING!!!!

      There are mentions of death/suicide. If you're uncomfortable with that, please click off.

It's so quiet.

The world is an inconsistent hum of long-faded screams and blacking out memories.

It's so cold.

A bleary, cloudless sky brimming with tears that never fall waits above. Below, the same stagnant sorrow tosses and turns restlessly in its grave.

Your heart rests there, in a grave.

A blatant, overwhelming coat of dust pollutes the air from years of nothing. It politely parts to make room for you when you brave a tentative step inside.

It had taken you so long to at last gather the courage to so much as look in the direction of this place. You hold the feeling in your arms, cradling it protectively against your chest as if you will drop it any moment now and never find it again.

Your body is here, standing and staring at the heart-wrenchingly empty space. Your mind drifts elsewhere.... far away, silently tiptoeing back to a time you have long begun to believe you imagined. The memories creep back in slowly, despite the well-worn shovel you used to bury them being violently shoved down as well.

You stand, limp, remembering back when the gray had not overtaken your vision. You watch the closed doors with a gaze so intense that the color should have come rushing back along with the lost whispers of your past.

Of course, you know, there is no way to take back what was done, especially because what was done did not directly involve you.

"I thought I would find you here," says a voice, gravelly and worn, but soft.

You don't turn around, placing your trust delicately in their hands. They cup it safely in their palm, mirroring the physical touch smoothing over your cheek, stubbornly warm despite the scathingly biting cold in your chest. It snaps at you, but cannot touch you. They are here. They are warm. They are loving.

They know you.

They face the doors, as well, without a doubt seeing all those little missing colors, translucent outlines of long-gone smiles catching your eye in the dust. You offer one to them, a bare, empty thing.

"What did you need?" you ask, the words bitterly familiar on your tongue.

"To see if you were okay," they tell you, a hand sliding gently around yours with a forgiving squeeze. "I was worried."

Interesting how three words can force tears to your eyes.

They say nothing more, just allowing you to breathe and bathe in their warmth. To calm yourself. They give you a moment. The kind of thing the world refuses to give away.

"I'm sorry," you offer, taking bashful hold of the olive branch wordlessly but knowingly offered to you.

They'd always been good at making you see sense, even now, stubborn and war-torn as you are. Even now, phasing irregularly between absent and present. You feel as if you have no personality anymore. No view. No feelings. You no longer feel like a being, despite knowing you are.

You feel detached.

Alone.

You suck in a breath through your teeth, deafeningly loud in the quiet.