Three months, five days, and six hours.
You've been gone so long that I can't remember what it felt like to have you next to me in bed. The dipping and creaking of the bed as you moved in your sleep because you were restless. Slowly I dragged a hand across the light purple sheets that we had once laid on for hours at a time.
I can't even remember whether or not I managed to reach your nose after that random growth spurt I had. I was always the shorter one, but I loved it when your arms would wrap around my waist regardless and you'd pick me up and spin me around.
Your smile would light up the world as the edges of your eyes crinkled with the corners of your mouth.
"I love you. My beautiful princess."
You'd say as I closed my eyes resting my forehead against yours.
"Sarah it's time to move on. You weren't that close anyway. It was just a highschool fling. It's time you apply to college. I let you take a year off because you promised to apply right when the next year started!"
Mom continued to yell at me, but I didn't even listen as I rested my elbow on the edge of the car door ignoring how annoying it was when each bump would make me have to move my arm back in place. She was still yelling at me when she suddenly stopped the car making me turn to her in alarm.
"Will you listen to me now?"
She huffed, and I glared at her unbuckling my seatbelt while the whispers in the back of my mind started to laugh.
"What are you doing?"
I opened the door kicking it open before jumping out of the car slamming the door behind me walking away.
I ignored the yells of protest from my mother as she yelled opening the window yelling across the seat for me to get back in the car.
'Why don't you run?'
'Run away'
'Don't look back'
The whispers taunted me, and when my mom got out of the car I started to run. My fingers grazing the wooden fence next to me. She was catching up. I turned the corner into a gravel alleyway jumping up onto the fence pulling myself up before using my foot to gain more leverage before jumping down into someone's yard to escape her.
I ran across their yard ignoring the man who came out to yell at me using their gate at the back to put even more space between my mother and I. The little town disappeared first. Then the silence followed me. Leaving you in my memories like shards of painted glass.
