short(er) stories

your shade of gold.

a/n

dedicated to purple. who's real name I can't use here, but who's color will never leave me the same way.

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I'm happy for you.

it hurts.

god, it hurts like hell.

But I'm happy for you. you moved on from us so fast, it seemed like I had imagined it all. all of the moments that made us who we were together. the times we sang to Ed Sheeran in a parked car because we weren't old enough to drive. or you daring my to jump over the railing into the snow. or when I slipped while holding your hand, pulling you down to me. the split seconds hesitation I had when I looked up at you and met your eyes, all of my body screaming at me to close the gap between us and do what I had been aching to since we first met.

how I let go of your hand and pushed myself back up, brushing the snow from my sweatshirt. when we were walking home from school and it began to pour, so we decided to take cover under a tree rather than in your house that was just around the corner. we talked for hours there, until the sky cleared and the last of our tears were dry. you hugged me once, then twice when I asked for another one.

all of that, plus everything else. things that I couldn't speak of, or say out loud because then this space between us would feel that much deeper.

we don't know each other anymore. we knew everything, then, for some reason, we became strangers. you left, and I followed for a few weeks, dashing through halls and kicking doors down to catch a glimpse of you one last time, until you lost me completely.

you don't seem to be happy. as much as I hate how my eyes immediately go to you in our classes, my glances catch the furrowed eyebrows and glazed over facial expression you seem to be bearing all the time now. the amount of self control it has taken me to not reach out and grab your hand, to not pull you aside when I see you and demand you to tell me what's wrong is insurmountable. I didn't know I was capable of acting so indifferent, when the very blood in body boils at the thought of you not being completely okay.

it is not my place anymore to ask you how you are. and that makes everything more unbearable.

you are with your other friends. the people you used to tell me about. the ones you said were annoying or that you didn't prefer being with. but I'm happy for you, because you seem to have moved one, you don't feel what I still feel now. you didn't seem to have turned to stone, or gone cold.

like I said it hurt. it still hurts. it hurt when I slid down the tiled wall of a bathroom and sat on the floor crying my heart out, feeling it shatter beneath my ribs.

it hurt when I passed you in between class and I remembered how you smelled.

and fuck, it hurt like something words can't describe when I saw you laughing and smiling when you walked by me, not even bothering to look.

and it hurts now. as I drip these sentences from my soul and through my fingertips, finally acknowledging the gashes you tore into me that I mistook for valleys in my heart. I'm not numb to it. I feel it, and I can't decide if it's for better or for worse. in every place where you laid your hands on me, it burns red instead of blue. a line going from the bottom of my throat to the top of my stomach caves in under the weight of all you left me with.

I have turned this pain into something verging on poetic, into something that doesn't feel part of me. I couldn't have it inside of me for ever, building my being upon what you destroyed. it doesn't make it hurt any less, it just makes what hurt not feel invisible.

the only thing I can hope for is that I know all pain will subside until it is nothing but a clench in my gut. the only thing I will be left with is the memory of you and the lessons I've learned. you will leave me in a second way, but I know that it will be for the better. instead of a streak of black, a shade of gold will illuminate me.

and that, purple, will be the thing that will free us.

a/n

friendship breakups are harder that relationship breakups. you don't expect a friendship to end. you think you're in this for life. especially if there were no signs of it fading before the bond completely disintegrated. this was the story of a heartbreak, and I hinted at this before in another piece. it took a lot to put this into words, and it took even more to publish it.

please, be kind to yourselves today. I love you stunning supernovas. 

-alex