Snow

38 | i want you to be happy

❝safe now, it's over; clammy slumber detoxing. the warm haze is long gone.❞

❘❘

NOTHING CAN HURT YOU if you're numb.

There is no definitive stretch of time, no concrete concept of being. Only an emptiness. As a blistering wind lashes at my ankles, as my fingertips lose feeling, as my entire body sinks into brick and stone, desperate for something warm, algo esperanzado, I gasp for air.

Hours are minutes, minutes are seconds, seconds are simply shaky sobs, sorry and self-destructive, claiming the chill on my skin with a million sensations of nothingness.

Lying in the November night, I'm... nothing. Estoy sola.

Nunca he estado tan sola. Nunca.

It does hurt.

Dry lips part, raw throats tighten. I feel myself beneath paper skin, withering into a mangled mess of defeat. Beyond a foggy lens, warm tears and blurring burns, cold breath tangles across my collarbone.

Estoy sola, sola, sola.

My fingers shake, soften, sting. I blink into the darkness, shivering at the sight of my phone in my palm.

4:58

The numbers stare back, a white-hot blaze of neon blinding me into an animalistic—

I keel over, my stomach lurching, twisting, clenching into a knot of nausea. My phone smacks the stones, and the impact, the crack, sends me reeling in pain. I swallow, but my throat feels scratchy, like I've already choked on everything that could possibly burn me from the inside out.

Somewhere, somewhere lost in my bloodstream, in the fragile framework of all things that can break and die, swelling in the mind of my body, in the heart of my mind, it's infinite. It's a mass of miserable need, a gnawing, gnashing hunger.

Ya necesito algo más.

"You always want more, huh?"

Más, más, más.

I can't even follow the fast, frantic motions. There's a blur of my hands, still trembling, still burning, and no puedo sentir nada as I tap the cracked screen.

Algo. Solo necesito algo. Ahora. Even if it's him, ink and skin, holding me, staying with me, loving me... keeping me from dying alone. Because maybe, just fucking maybe, I'll finally die.

Closing my eyes, I count down each shrill ring in desperation—one, two, three, four... and nothing. The dial tone cracks, flooding with the automated voice. "Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message sys—"

I tear my phone away from my ear in frustration, biting back an embarrassing cry. With stinging eyes, tears skewing the screen into a white blur, I fumble to find someone else... anyone else.

Does anyone care if I die alone? In the backyard of a fucking bar, anchored to stones, bruises imprinted into skin, blood stained on my bottom lip? Still fucking yanking my dress down?

"None of these other boricuas, Nevaaaaa. I'm the birthday girl. You have to come home with me."

That drunken drawl drifts through my chest, snaking around my heart like a strand of something surreal. Was that... tonight? Had my entire world really come crumbling down in the span of the last night?

A thick sob builds in my chest, crawls up and up and up, comes out choked and strained and so fucking pathetic. It hits me, attacks me, grabs me by the fucking throat—that temptingly toxic hatred. Like a bittersweet edge against my skin, a lining of acid and bile in my stomach, an anvil on my heart.