I Once Loved. | ✓

08: broken canvas

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b r o k e n  c a n v a s

You were a broken canvas. Your alabaster skin was littered with scars and bruises, like glittering stars in the night sky, like paint splatters. As I held your trembling body in my arms, I felt how thin you were, how unnaturally spindly your arms were, how weak you seemed. Something wasn't right. But I didn't know then, that you were someone I once loved. You were but a beautiful stranger to me, and why would a stranger like me have the right to comment on it?

Still, as we cried together that morning, we were one.

At last you peeled yourself from me and, sniffling, managed to murmur: "I'm so sorry for being a burden." You flinched. "I... I shouldn't even be here, I'm so sorry... I have to go—" Who in their right mind would let you leave? I caught your wrist as you started upwards towards the door and stared into your eyes: soulless eyes. 

"Kevin Moon," I said softly. "Are you okay?"

I remember hearing you murmur frenzied under your breath: "I mustn't be weak. I mustn't be weak. I can't be weak. I can't be weak." But as I squeezed gently on your hand you crumpled into a heap and began to sob louder than before. I don't think I had ever heard someone cry more before — and the brightness I had seen in your eyes that second time as you drank my chamomile tea showed me that you could be happy. Something was seriously very wrong.