rain » vkook

eleven

"concrete jungle," i say, my hesitant voice so feathery light it tickles my throat. "concrete jungle."

i'm laying on my back on the floor of my living room, staring at the bare walls. no art. i'm starting to run out in the shop, so i've shortened the times i'm open. i barely eat, which is good because i'm running out of money anyway.

it's fine. i've been thinking that for how long, now? long enough to fool myself into thinking the numbness is okayness. it's fine.

my white walls are fine. my two remaining unbroken, dry brushes are fine. my inability to convert oxygen into what i need to live is fine. the continual burning of the sun is fine.

nothing has happened. i wake up, eat maybe one meal, stand behind the counter of my studio and wait on customers who don't show up. then i sleep. it's fine. it's routine. everyone loves routine, and people love everyone. i love routine. and i also love how i think and my name and my burnt-feeling fingertips and the broken wires and gears inside my mind.

i don't. love it, that is. i can't pretend, can't force myself to. but i tried.

"concrete jungle," i say, "everything has changed." and on the last word, my voice breaks, the drought in my chest becomes an ocean, and everything races through me so fast that i want to be numb again. i'm choking on green-blue and indigo and yellow and BLACK and fucknoplease–his eyes.

it's been two months.

two months since it rained, two months since taehyung ran away because i didn't try hard enough. two months since i destroyed my art, two months since i created more.

two months since the wrongness in my stomach and head felt right.

for two months i have seen myself with a broken and hanging neck in the mirror. for two months i have felt my chest crushing and for two months i have been waking up every night unable to breathe, just like many years ago when i was afraid of everything.

for two months the sky has been silent.

except now i finally realize. the sky had nothing to do with him. because he is not magical, his voice is not the cadence of the rain. he is just a person.

and people leave.

people are not bigger than they are. people are tiny and more often they not, they mean more to you than you mean to them and you're left behind when they leave with all your organs outside of your body except for your heart. your hands cup empty air, deadened by broken promises, because they should be holding your own heart, except you were an idiot and gave it away to someone you thought was bigger than all the planets.

but they were just a person.

taehyung is not sky. i am not picasso. the rain is not debussy.

the rain is cold and uncaring and it does not bring two people together against a backdrop of pain and i-need-you. the rain is not musical. it is laughing spitefully, quietly, as it tries to drown me. the rain does not bring anything into focus; i stand in the middle of the street and try to think, to remember the exact sound of his voice when we first spoke, the exact planes of his face, but all i can see is unceasing ropes of gray-blue and everything is gray-blue and i'm sick of gray-blue.

i can feel the gray-blue filling my head and my throat and i can't breathe, so for the first time in two months (and thirteen days) i pick up a brush.

i go to my studio first, head tilted down, hiding from everyone who walks past me. i don't want them to see the black circles under my eyes and the red cracks in my lips and the lack of pigment in my skin.

i fumble with the door of the studio, struggling to fit the key in the lock with my shaking hands. they're cold, but the kiss of the metal handle is colder. finally the door swings open and i flick on the lights as i spill inside.

when i close the door, i revel in the silence. i can almost ignore the patter of rain against the windowpanes and walk past empty spaces on the walls and shelves to the back room. waiting for me is a dusty easel, a blank canvas staring accusingly at me. i take the brush from my pocket and grab tubes of gray, blue, and black and i mix.

i paint until all the gray-blue has left my mind, until taehyung's body leaves, until his voice and transcendent hesitance and whispering voice leave.

and i'm sobbing. i'm painting this canvas, clothes and eyes dripping, and my brushstrokes have gone to shit because of my shaking hands and jerking shoulders. the black outlines of taehyung's frame waver and weave across the painting, and through my tear-stained vision, i think it's more him than when i first started.

i wipe under my eyes to rid the tears, but that only serves to paint them on, lines of black and splatters of the incessant gray-blue. i may have chased it from my brain, but i don't think it'll ever truly be gone. just like taehyung. he may be gone, but the memory of him stains my skin; gray-blue sinking into my pores.

i paint in my studio until long after the rain has stopped. i'm breathless and aching but it feels good. and when i'm done, i have five paintings of my gray-blue tormentor; a collection i'm calling When The Sky Walks Away (He Takes Everything With Him).

he takes everything with him.

a/n: MY PIZZA ROLLS R STILL TOO HOT I WANT JUSTICE