SMALL TALKS

imprints.

my father used to tell me that it was wrong to drag my coloured crayons across the walls, bringing to life the ideas that formed in my mind, purely because it made a mess, and all in all, it was hard to remove.

when I met you, you let me draw in chalk and charcoal all over your heart, wrap it in fairy lights to brighten up the dark, and I'd draw two life lines; one for me. one for you.

you let me buy snow globes and decorate your shelves with them until the room glistened with domed glass and falling snowflakes that painted pearlescent rainbows against the ceiling, even in the middle of summer - the heat would never stop the winter wonderland from growing.

I listened out for your heart in the still of night, when the birds were asleep, finally drifting behind closed eyes, I found you wrapped up in my beige sheets and blankets, still with my name written in chalk and charcoal across your heart, you never removed it, not then, I smiled, and not ever, I thought.

that was, until, the next summer came, the snow globes smashed to reveal a chilling call, one that I couldn't register properly in my brain, all I knew is that it was shutting out the lights and cutting the life lines between us. one for me. one for you.

the drawings in chalk and charcoal would never be the same, I couldn't pick up my colours when they were tainted with the shades of another time, one that didn't suit them or match them or blend in with your heart strings, it didn't create life lines for a pair of dreamers or sculpt snow globes to drive through the heat of summer.

instead, it traced the walls, until I found it was your voice yelling at me this time, to erase the colours that I had imprinted in my mind, and for the first time I was seeing your heart for what it truly was. empty. completely devoid of me. and my colours.

- I never realised how much of you was imprinted into me until you hurt me in a way that I knew I could never have you back in the same way as I once did.