Numbing Waves

Shatter

Winter season in the city could be beautiful. It could be beautiful if the icy polluted snow hadn't made us late for work. Or if the subway platforms weren't filled with cranky people forced to be early risers in puffy coats. We're all so glad to be out of the lip cutting cold, but the train. Its delayed again. A wave of groans erupt from the crowded platform.

I'm not looking at the train arrivals. I didn't even hear the delay announcement.

My fingers absentmindedly trace along the skin on your hand; taking into account every tiny crevice and the way your knuckles feel when they aren't in a fist.

We don't look at each other, not for too long anyways. I glance up to your face and smile. But then I look down to your other hand that's causing the light to dimly sprawl across your face. You were preoccupied with your phone, scrolling through a homepage of useless content.

I look down to my feet. The concrete platform with black spots never got much attention but I forced myself to be interested in it. The hand I once held dropped to your side. It was only then that you noticed me.

You gently placed your hand on my chin and tilted my face up to meet your eyes. I could never read them. I've tried for so long but I'm beginning to think there is nothing to read. That you are in fact shallow. There is no emotion for me within you.

The apathy pooled in your eyes and yet you lent down and pressed your warm lips gently on mine. There was nothing sweeter than the taste of you lingering for a second, then smiling when I pull you in deeper. I could so easily lose myself had I not been gripping the seams on your shirt, desperately trying to hold on to reality.

The train flew into the station with a gust of wind promptly following it. My hair flew into my face and it made you grin. We got on the train before it got packed with the aggravated commuters. There was open seat and I took it without a second thought. I glanced up at you and saw that you were leaning on the door adjacent to me. Not even a second later you pulled your phone out of your pocket to look at what I imagined to be a chat screen. My gaze dropped to my lap. My fingers traced the tight knit of my jeans, I must've been trying to follow a trail. I can't imagine where it would have led me.

I felt a hand on my head and I glanced up to see your pitch black eyes. We'd arrived at your stop. We wrestled our way out of the congested train car. Chased each other up the subway stairs and walked all too gleefully with the sunset gently brushing our backs. I took your hand in mine and at first I felt you tense. I wanted to believe it was because you were suddenly shocked at the delighted emotion you felt when I touched you.

But I knew better.

You held my hand tightly as we all but ran to your front door. The moment the door opened I felt home again. Your old worn couch was therapeutic to an aching heart. I sat down in the center, just like always. There was a bend in the center of the couch shaped just like me. Just like there was a hole in my heart shaped just like you.

You sat in your corner and I crawled closer to you. My head laid on your chest but I'd stopped trying to listen for your heartbeat ages ago. You wrapped your arm around me and we watched the meaningless static and gas-filled cells bounce around on your television screen. It didn't matter how intently I looked at that screen because the only thing I could see was a future with you. Not in the romantic way where we fall in love and you propose one night in the middle of the city. Not in the way you want to imagine yourself. Imagining a happy future with you is like begging for a death wish. I imagined all the pain and the heartache that was yet to come. It was creepily looming around the corner, waiting until one of us fell in love.

I used to think it was me. That I'd be the one that would hurt. I thought I'd had to be the one to patch myself up again and stop tracing the creases in your skin, hoping it'd lead me to wherever your heart resides.

But I was wrong.

I forgot what I said, or it didn't matter what I said, but we had gotten up from the couch. I ran up the stairs to the second floor. You were behind me chasing me, smiling and laughing. In that moment it seemed like the world moved in slow motion.

It was pitch black upstairs but I knew the third door at the end of the hallway all too well to miss it. I waited for you to open the door and I waited for you to lay down. I got on top of you and let my lips sink into you. So rhythmic as if we were following the beat to a song I'd listened to at a party. My hands felt the warmness radiating from the skin under your shirt. My pants were somewhere on your bedroom floor, I don't exactly remember when they came off.

I understood the wall you put up between us. I understood your restrictions. But at the time I could not understand how we were able to be so passionate, so vulnerable if neither of us cared about each other. Or at least you didn't. I'd deny it to myself to this day that I ever cared about you.

Not all the late car rides home, not the way we'd sneak off in an abandoned warehouse, not the way you took it upon yourself to get me everywhere safe, not the way you turned your phone off when I asked you, not the way you flung me over your shoulder when I was angry, not the way the wall you put up between us slowly came crashing down, not the way you didn't let me leave when I decided I was done with you, not the way you begged me for forgiveness; Not any of it could have ever let me know what I know now.

I think I forced myself to not realize. I think I wanted to believe you had no feeling for me, I must have wanted to hurt.

I was wrong.

We both broke each other. I'd made you have to pick up all your pieces and try to stick them together. I watched coldly as one by one they came tumbling down, shattering on the ground we'd once walked on holding hands. I was trying to patch my pieces together again as well. But we'd both shattered on the same ground and all our pieces are intertwined. I have some of you in me and you have some of me in you. It just fit so perfectly.

So perfectly that we look up from our piles of rough edged blood stained glass and into each other's eyes.

Your eyes, they were never pitch black. They're dark brown and I can now see the layers that hid deep within them. I have no idea what you saw in my eyes at that moment.

We were both still broken but maybe, just maybe, we can be broken together.