30 Day Writing Prompts

8

8. A heartbreak causes fissures and cracks in the earth. Tell the story behind the Grand Canyon.

He stares down to the stream below, the sun shining onto the water as it sparkles brightly in the light. The drop isn't too high, but high enough. Tiny rocks crumble off of the ledge as he steps closer. The width of the cliff edge becoming thinner as he walks closer to the drop.

He made this broke fissure in the earth. All his life he had noticed the cracks on pavements, never knowing who's broken heart had dented the earth.

It really was the Grand Canyon of all heartbreaks, wasn't it? All those months of talking to him every single night and every stupid fall out that made him cry over someone who never loved him back. It was worthless, in the end. It always is though.

"I loved you," he whispered. The word 'loved' felt foreign on his tongue, especially speaking about that person. It was always 'I love you'. No past tense, no was. It was always just love. Not loved.

He's young. Maybe too young to be in love, as many adults have told him. Far too young to be broken-hearted in the way he is now. His legs are hurting, the ache of standing too long and pondering whether to jump or to fall, to leap or to trip as if it was an accident and not something he did on purpose. Or maybe he'll spin on his heel and run. He's always been scared of death, yet wants to experience it so badly. Too young to fall in love. Too young to be broken hearted. Far too young to die. He's not though. Breathed for 15 years but lived through 10 more. The years will catch up on him if he manages to grow older, but he'll be dead by 40.

"Why am I doing this?" He asks himself, looking down at his palms. Raw and red from climbing to the top. Covered in disgusting blisters. He shifts his gaze to the horizon; the sun setting in the distance, painting the sky with an orange hue.

He then remembers why he's standing at the peak of his own destruction, looking down on the mountains of heartbreak created by him.

It hurt, it really did.

He would stay up late to talk to him. Too late. Always waking up tired for school grades slipping but never enough for anyone to notice. He admired him. His humour, the way he phrased things, the silly words he used, the pictures he'd send. It really was love. He always yearned for love in it's purest form but that love was so toxic. Maybe that's why he was so addicted. Alcohol is a toxin. It poisons you when you drink too much, and even when you don't drink enough the taste it leaves in your mouth is still bitter and gross. There are people who are addicted to alcohol, though. Naturally, if you drink it too often you learn to get used to the taste of something poisonous, even if it's slowly killing you. On the inside, then on the outside. It was so cold in February, colder than it usually was at that time of year. Valentine's Day, how cliché but oh-so romantic.

"I love you," he'd whisper in his ear, too dark to see his face and the devious grin painted on it. Too blank to tell he was lying at the time. But he believed him, didn't he? I mean, why not. What harm could it do?

Even just thinking that made him amused, his laughs echoing loudly. No one would hear those laughs though. He wonders what it will feel like, plunging into the water. Is it cold? Warm? Shallow? Deep? Will the water break his fall at all?

February. Twenty eight days but it really isn't any less superior to any of the other months. He was so filled with love that month. It hurt a little bit though, being convinced they couldn't ever be together.

"I thought you loved me," he mutters to himself, a few tears rolling down his cheek.

'I don't love you. I never did. It was entertainment. That's all you are. It's all you ever will be,'

"I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME!" He screams it now, the tears coming faster and a lump forming in his throat.

He crumbles to the ground, sobbing like a small child who wasn't allowed the toy he wanted most.

Now he knows though. He knows why he made this canyon. He knows why the fissure was so large. The heartbreak was so bad. Those toxic relationships that came before and it seemingly just got worse.

So he stands up and takes a deep breath. He's shaking now, but it really will be better.

And so he leaps, proudly. No more broken hearts.