blackheart ➵ m. clifford

➵ twenty

➵ michael

Tossing and turning was not how I pictured my nights without her. I couldn’t even close my eyes without reaching for the empty space where her body had been, and the sheets on her side of the bed hadn’t been disturbed in days – it was driving me batshit. I wanted to bask in her warmth and watch her chest rise and fall and listen to her breathe in her sleep.

The words ‘I love you’ bounced around in my head and I cursed myself for being so stupid, and I cursed her for being even more so. I hadn’t been looking for a response or a declaration of love, and I sure as fuck hadn’t been looking for her to run away from me. She ran and that was the thing that broke my heart the most. My chest wouldn’t have caved had she just responded in some sort of positive fucking manner, and it wouldn’t have caved had she fucking said it back.

No, I didn’t understand what was going on in that pretty little head of hers. I didn’t understand schizophrenia and I didn’t understand anxiety. I didn’t understand Jett. I didn’t understand how the person who claimed I was special could leave me in my bed without her.

I hated her, but fuck, I loved her. I was bonded to her through my lips and my hands and my heart and my soul and now that she was gone I couldn’t function like I had before. There was a split in my lungs and a hole in my heart and there was an empty darkness where my feelings had been. Where she had been. Everything reminded me of her; the sheets that smelled like her touch, the air that tasted of her breath. Her art was still on my throat and my chest and my thighs and I wanted to scrub my skin of the bruises that had been made through lust. She was a part of my being; her entity had seeped into my skin and into my bones.

And looking through the abysmal crowd of dolled-up, ever-perfect faces, I knew she didn’t love me. She didn’t love me, and she didn’t want me, and not sharing this with her made me feel empty. I had been so hungry for her touch and for her presence for so long that I couldn’t even feel the starvation anymore. I couldn’t feel the burn in my heart or the twist in my stomach or the ache in my lungs as they struggled to inflate. This wasn’t living anymore; it was existing.

I felt pathetic – I had fallen in love with a girl so hard and so fast, and the minute we had been separated, I felt like I wasn’t alive anymore. I was pathetic for letting this girl hold my heart and cradle my life in her hands and she wasn’t strong enough to carry it in her arms. I was pathetic for thinking that love was a timeless emotion, and I was pathetic for feeling so broken. We had been apart for five days, and already I missed her so much that my hands couldn’t paint and my mouth couldn’t speak and I didn’t want to be without her ever again.

But I was surrounded by her. I was surrounded by her in ink, and oil, and watercolour, and acrylic, and on canvas, and on silk, and in the music that played through the speakers in the centre of my exhibit. She was everywhere and she had the stars in her eyes and the roses in her hair and the blood on her lips and she was so beautiful that I couldn’t even fathom why she had ever adored me. I was pathetically, feebly, lamentably and miserably in love with her.

And she wasn’t here.

“This is Michael.” Voices simply went through one ear and out the other, and I had to strain to listen as I swished around the plum-coloured liquid in my glass. The one to speak was the head of our design department, Erin, who was bright and bubbly and wore the vivid colours to match. “Michael is one of our most promising students. He’s bright and he’s ambitious-“

I zoned out, looking down at my glass in a desperate attempt to wallow in my own self-pity. I found myself staring at the lip of my wine glass, hopelessly craving for hers, laced with whiskey and honey and I was such an idiot for telling her I loved her. I was an idiot, I was an idiot, I was an idiot. My stomach was filled with fainted butterflies that were looking for a reason to fly again, and my veins were pulsing with blood that just wanted the warmth of a heart that wasn’t cold. She had broken me, and all along, she had been scared that I was going to break her.