There she was (and there was my life).
She didn't deal with hearts. Hearts were too small and limited and old-fashioned for her. She worked with brains and humanity's weaknesses like a witch you couldn't even tell whether she was even human. She was probably a devil yet she never really seemed like it – not like she behaved like an angel, she behaved with such smooth ordinariness she wasn't actually supposed to cause much damage. Everything that happened after her was like a mistake built on mistakes built on many other mistakes you couldn't tell whether it was really life anymore or not. She changed everything. Blue was bluer, white was brighter, the air was fragrant, the grass was velvety, babies were angels, mums were roses, books were bibles, food was ambrosia, water was holy, sleep was comfort and life was pain-free. In her absence, all the beauty went down a drill at the bottom of my world. Blue was grey, black was darker, the air was stale, babies were regrets, parents were burdens, breathing was punishment, sleep was nightmarish and my body was aching itself away. Every nerve within me pulsed until it went off and I was slowly dying. She was a dream that broke me and left me a mess. I didn't want to sleep anymore, but I couldn't carry myself in the open too long. I shut down too easily very often. I ate much more than I needed because I thought something was wrong with my tongue I couldn't taste anything. Whenever I thought too much, I tried focusing on my breaths, but that made it even worse because I would recognise how heavy my lungs are. With every breath I had to expand them, then I had to push the air out and let my lungs recoil. And I couldn't do that only once or twice, I had to do it all the time, involuntarily because something in my brain was convinced I was still fit for life–(I bet it never met her).
Then she came back in. She breathed like it didn't bother her and smiled like it didn't hurt. She even laughed like it didn't pierce her lungs with guilt at night or even in the early morning. My life was in her pocket and sometimes her hand would slip in and squeeze it until it wasn't plump enough. In her other pocket she had a bag of many pink and fleshy little hearts she probably flaunted in front of her fellow devils. She probably won all the Devil of The Week, Devil of The Month and Devil of the Year prizes and positions. Everyone probably envied her power and her beauty and maybe even the audacity to keep her victims hanging all the time without a break or even letting them go. I bet she put a lot of effort in her first victim, they probably thought they were truly the merriest on the planet until her rope was around their neck and too abruptly tightened. I wonder what she felt when she threw them off the 1000th cloud spiralling down towards the hellish underground. She probably beamed then went into a market to buy sparkling water and a pack of cigarettes. Then walked all the way from the centre of town towards the beach where she sat and listened to Bach. Her eyes caught mine and I stopped wondering.
In fact, everything stopped. A pair of wide brown eyes gazed right into mine and it was a total invasion of privacy, not that she hadn't seen any of my weaknesses before, not that she didn't know who I was anyway, but I felt vulnerable and wanted to just lie on the ground and curl into a ball and force myself to stop breathing until that part of my brain got the message that it was futile to keep expanding and relaxing my lungs and that I didn't want to do life anymore. But I did nothing of that and just stared back. Her eyes had changed, they were happier regardless of their puffiness, and they didn't speak. They were just big and brown and opaque. I couldn't tell her a word nor did she say anything. Then she looked away like I wasn't there and we didn't know who the other was. Was she ignoring me? Did she let go of me? Did she return my life? I didn't feel the slightest difference in my body.
She looked back at me because I was talking too much and I probably annoyed her like any kind of unwanted noise in the background you didn't know from where it was coming, and still, her eyes didn't respond. Mine went frantic. There had to be a message embedded somewhere. Maybe in her lips? Maybe in the slope of her nose? Where was it? She couldn't have easily let go. She felt unobtainable yet totally out there in front of me and it was frustrating because we couldn't connect. I thought for some reason that her brain should be doing the rewiring to recall our connection, but it was running late and I was losing time because she was constantly looking away and was about to leave. I wanted to open her skull in halves and reach for every little moment we shared and put them at the front of her mind so she remembered who we really were. I wanted to toy with her mind like she fondled with mine whenever I tried to sleep. I wanted to shake her spine maybe it would make the remembering quicker, maybe it would help, maybe we would go back home together once again, but she didn't look at me anymore and in seconds, she was gone.
I gazed at her pockets to find them empty and her hands by her sides. I was worried. I wanted to go after her and know what she'd done. I wanted to push her to a wall and tell her she was responsible for my misery. I wanted to make her return every heart to whoever it belonged... but I wanted her to keep my life for any reasonable reason there could be. I tried following her, but soon I stopped when I found the bag of hearts and my life thrown in a bin and squashed under rubbish... I still felt weak, I even felt tired. I slumped to the floor and tried not to think about what just happened. I even tried forgetting that I saw her again. I wanted to focus on my breaths, but I was hardly breathing anymore... something in my mind told me, my brain had probably finally understood.
