I didn't feel the anger at first. Everyone expected me to be mad at him. But I wasn't. I wasn't even sad: I was just numb. Coldness trickled down my spine as my brain tried to process what I'd learned. It was the strangest feeling - I knew I should be furious, screaming and crying - but I wasn't.
The pain didn't kick in until I saw my sister running towards me and crying, her frizzy black hair plastered to her cheeks. I didn't cry until her arms were around me.
But now...
Now I can feel my heart being torn to shreds.
His words had once built me beautiful worlds, had once been the source of all my love and happiness. Now they are knives. Stabbing my heart without mercy, without pity, as I reread the truth behind his absence. They never stop coming, overflooding my sense of numbness with the pain and anger I should have been feeling.
I know what I have to do.
I race to what used to be our bedroom and pull out an antique box. It is soft, faded blue in colour and adorned with delicate butterflies. I once saw it as my most beautiful possession. Now all I see is red.
With shaking hands, I pull open the clasp to reveal every letter he ever wrote me. There are hundreds. Each one is indented with his scrawling letters as he expressed his love in the only way he knew how.
And I kept every one of them, treasuring his eloquence and the way his words had made my eyes tear up with affection. Now I feel like laughing. How could I have been so stupid?
I take all the letters and kneel in front of the wax candle by my bed. This is it. I will erase myself from his life, and him from my mind.
I fumble with the match that will end my pain until I eventually light the candle.
The flame starts small.
A slow, pulsating orange ball of heat at the tip of the candle. I hold out the first letter.
Watching the words fall away as the paper blackens and shrivels brings me a rush of emotion and confusion. New found love, secret glances, stolen kisses. Then the clashing of our lives after we'd promised to spend them together, the slipping feeling I was losing him forever, the glances grown distant. And now. Now is the pain.
The flame grows as I add more letters, enveloping the palaces he created and singeing away the section of my heart that had belonged to him. I stare into the flame as my eyes begin to water. The fire and words engulf me. Anger builds up inside of me, threatening to burst out, forcing tears to fall thick and fast onto the burning letters.
The fire is beautifully destructive. It flickers through each letter as it kills his lies. All my anger channels into the crackling storm, strong enough to remove him entirely from my head. I hope he is happy now.
I watch his so-called love wither and die under the heat and hate.
I watch as it's overpowered by his betrayal, reducing only to ashes of broken promises.
I watch it die in the fire.
I watch it burn.
