A Broken Hearts Last Day

Chapter 4

"I never cared how I looked to the world, until you became my world, making me always wanna be and look my best"

When they had finally calmed down enough to function properly, they folded the drawing once again and wrote a little note on it before standing up and walking towards the fountain, their steps were heavy as always, their shoulders slumped and their eyes filled with sorrow. With every step taken, they held on tighter to the piece of paper as if in a blink of an eye it would disappear. Once they reached the edge of the fountain they kneeled in front of it and while biting the inside of their cheeks until they bled, they dropped the drawing onto the water and watched as parts of it started to show through the folds as the paper got wet.

Not being able to stare at it a second longer, our photographer got up abruptly and turned around, walking away from what was once their safe heaven and now felt like a personal hell. They walked away with hands in their pockets and music once again playing, but this time blasting through their earphones to keep their hellish thoughts away.

It was now 11.44am so they headed towards their next stop. It was about two hours and a half by foot and since they decided it would be a good idea to have lunch there, they took their time to enjoy the walk and use it to calm themselves down a bit, knowing that where they were going would be ten times more triggering than the worn out drawing or the untouched cup of coffee.

This time the music managed to shush the demons in their mind as they focused on every step taken and the melody blasting through their earphones, but the lyrics felt blurred and they could barely recognize the words sung, they had reached what I like to call "airplane mode", their body completely functional and doing as planned, breathing, hearing, walking and whatnot, while their mind is in a void of nothingness and everything, oblivious to the world around them, feeling every kind of daunting emotion that could possibly exist and no emotion at all at the same time, their body and mind trying to somehow ignore all those feelings and drown in them at the same time. And all while walking towards their next stop as if different corners of their mind weren't having a battle for dominance.

The sun was now higher and the temperature was rising, making small droplets appear on our photographer's forehead, but as they were numb to everything they failed to notice this and the fact that a small patch of sweat was also starting to appear on their back. And even though the music was numbing them from the world they still managed to see their artist wherever their eyes landed. They saw roses, it reminded them how their young artist loved drawing roses on fire, saying that it represented eternal passion, their eyes landed on a small apartment entrance and our photographer wondered if they would have thought that place worthy to be chosen for the drawing of the day. Probably not — thought our photographer as they stared at the wilting colorful lilies adorning the entrance.

The walk felt slower than usual, and although they were oblivious to the general world around them they couldn't help but notice the small details that made their mind flood with memories from the young artist, after all it had become an unconscious habit of theirs, a masochist instinct to keep the memories alive. In fact, a pink elephant could walk in front of them and they wouldn't even notice, unless it was purplish orange like a sunset, then they would probably only notice the color anyway, as it was another reminder.

Our photographer's eyes kept on wandering from object to object and person to person, landing only on what could be a possible trigger to another memory, a memory that would most likely hurt as much as every single one so far. It's not that the memories on their own were sad or painful, it's that they had been tainted by the sorrow and grieve our photographer was now consumed by.