Anthological

Noose

Words: 574

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       2.    The world spins around a star but your world spins around a different one.

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         You're wound up nice and tight with sarcasm and hurt and knowledge, and it feels like you've been bound together by coils of rope, and it feels a lot like the person you had loved cut off a piece to free your chest just to fasten a noose around your heart, and it's painful. You've cut off all ties to that person but it still feels like there's a noose around your heart squeezing out emotion and meaning until all it does is pump blood down your veins halfheartedly. You hate it, you hate this, you hate yourself, but lately you hate everything anyways so maybe that's expected. It's like ice and fire eating away at your insides and you can't do anything about it.

            And then here comes another person holding scissors and wearing a bright grin but you just squeeze the rope tighter and tighter and put sharp points and sullen stares and muttered words to your exterior, trying to make this person go away, because the noose is still there and you cannot add another one, you cannot have this happen to you again.

             But this person's charming and kind and he doesn't cut the ropes around your ribcage but he does loosen them and he sees the bruised and battered heart, barely hanging on by a torn sliver of rope, and then he cuts it, and that's when you realize you're not going to survive this, you're not. Your heart takes the time to heal and it's longer than you think this person expects and you wait for them to leave but they're still there, still loosening ropes and grinning bright grins and making music play in your brain and you would rather die than be with this person but you'd die for this person.

           It doesn't take long before the sharp points dull and you stare but it isn't sullenly and the muttered words start to sound like the beginnings of a love poem. 

           And then your heart heals, and that feels like the biggest mistake of all because now instead of blood all it pumps down to your veins is emotion, feelings you think have disappeared from your system, and it's like a disease spiking again just as you're in remission. And this is undoubtedly a disease, because this person shines brighter than ever and it feels like they're the sun and all of this is familiar, and it feels lovely to feel love again but you keep tensing and waiting for the pain.

           The ropes around your ribcage are replaced with warm feeling exploding from inside your chest and your heart, nice and healed, has a loose leash made of red ribbon and you can just see it wrapped  around this person's finger. Your heart will follow them everywhere now, and what choice do you have but to follow? You would kill for the leash to be gone and for your heart to be free but if this person didn't come you'd still be stuck hanging to death, a rope connected to your bones and making a tight necklace around your heart, and you think you'd prefer this leash, if you had to choose.

            People, normally  suffering from either purple prose or an existential crisis, exclaim isn't it beautiful, we're on this rock we named Earth with a smaller rock spinning around us while we spin around a star, isn't it amazing and you think no. Because you know what that feels like, because yes, the world spins around a star but your world spins around a different one, and you know that it isn't beautiful or amazing, that it feels terrible and painful and you would rather die than spin another time but you would also die to  orbit another thousand times. It's contradictory, and confusing and hurtful, like the ice and fire eating away at your insides. But you don't say anything, only think thoughts faster than you can keep up with.

       Yeah, you say. It's amazing.