blue pools x pink skies

12

HYACINTH BLUE

you don't know what hell is until the sight of you wrapped around another girl turns into me staring into the bottom of a toilet bowl. i tell you it was too many drinks and you know i haven't had anything to drink in years. you open the stall and stand over me, increasing the feeling that i am pathetic and you are perfect.

your cheeks are puffy and red and I want so badly to kiss them, even now. i can't stop staring at you, at your dimpled smile framed by freckles and lined with blue lipstick that is not yours.

you slide your back down the wall of the bathroom stall, a tear rolling down your cheek.

"Girl."

you've never said my name like that-like it matters to you.

"why do you stay around me?"

im taken aback. because i love you to the ends of the earth, because you tear me to pieces and tape me up in a brand new way, because you just, are.

"im so mean to you. i use you and tell you i love you and lead you on and on and on and on and on-" you burst into tears.

"i try so hard, but i don't love anybody. i never have. not romantically or sexually, nobody but you, once. i don't even know what that was. i can't f-f-feel anything i want to."

you hiccup and hide your face in your hands, smearing more of a stranger's lipstick across your face.

"look at me! im a mess. you are so lovely and beautiful and sweet and so amazingly intelligent and i can't even love you back. I want to be able to give you that thing you want so badly, but i never had it to begin with."

i can't even breathe.

before i can even register what's going on, im pulling you out of the bathroom and sitting you up on the sink, grabbing paper towels and wetting them to clean off your face.
i don't know why im doing this for you. i owe you nothing. but you look so sad and helpless and hurt that i can't help but want to protect you from everything.

when im finished, i sit next to you on the bathroom counter.
your hand somehow finds its way into mine and we sit in silence, listening to "uptown girl" play for the thousandth time from the bathroom speakers.
even so, you still hum a moonlight sonata, swinging your legs.

"Girl?"

"yes?"

"im sorry."

"it's okay."

it's not, but i say it is anyways. you're much more fragile than i ever imagined, and i couldn't handle you falling apart in my hands. not everybody has the amount of skill it takes to tape somebody back together.

only you.