Paradise

IV

Sadness is wanting a person, knowing that they are bad for you, just so you can have someone.

Paradise wanted to run. God did she want to run. From the pain of the life she led, from the gallons of blood she bled, from the squeaking springs of her bed.

But she never did.

The years swam by. Different men begging her attention, different tempos of the beating of her headboard against her cracked drywall.

Paradise pulled on her cropped sweater that showed the first two sets of ribs, and the low rise jeans that showcased her hipbones.

Because she was nothing more than the ellaborate ruse of large shirts and baggy pants and long sleeves rubbing against new cuts and playing with sickly looking greenish mashed potatoes and lying on the cold, dirty, cracked linoleum floor in a puddle of her own tears and dark circles under icey blue eyes that remind that certain boy of frozen lakes and clear skies.

But for now, she was about to give another stranger a taste of something she had never known. A place to match her name.

Paradise.

Paradise made sure the angry red slashes on her wrists, and the sadness that was held in each of the purple bruises that littered her perfectly imperfect face were covered with foundation and fabric. She applied mascara and thick eyeliner to her eyes that reminded a certain boy of frozen lakes and clear skies, then a thin coat of strawberry flavored lip balm to her chapped lips. Paradise sighed, staring into the dirty, cracked mirror.

A knock came to the door. And Paradise took a deep breath before decending the stairs and opening the front door, staring at her feet.

"Paradise? Is that you?" Parker asks, looking at her with a very confused expression on his face. Paradise looked up at him, her eyes wide with surprise. "Parker?" she asks, her eyebrows crunching in confusion. "You look... Amazing." Parker gushed, his face heating up and a blush creeping over his dimpled cheeks.

There, right there, Paradise blanked.

She was afraid.

She wasn't afraid of the beatings, the blood, the scars, the looming inevitability of her untimely death.

She was afraid of the thought that she could want him.

She could like this boy that looks like kindess. She could enjoy his sweet and silky voice.

She could adore the boy with the brown eyes that remind her of hot chocolate and warm mahogany fires that burn a little too bright.

Even though he sounds of deceit and smells of cigarettes and mistakes, she could love him.

It was then that she realised how abesolutely alone she was.

"We had better get going Arrie, we have alot to do, and very little time to do it in." Parker states, grabbing ahold of her sweaty palm. Parker leaded her down the driveway, and away from the broken home she had always known.

Paradise had a thought, a beautiful, healthy thought that sat haphazardly in the recesses of her not so beautiful, not so healthy mind.

She could be his.

But then, with his warm close-lipped smile and the dimples that seemed deeper then the hole in her heart, she didn't feel so broken.

She felt as if that large hand wrapped around her cold fingers was the only thing keeping her together.

And she never wanted to let go.