Empty air: a cold, blue heart washed up on the shore of your lip

A feeling: the free fall down the cliff face with no ropes and a cordless parachute, restricting arms, glueing each finger's atom together, nothing to stop the rushing that blinds ears, snot streaming and mouth forced shut by the weight of the pull. The descent into a delirious lunacy without the moon to send the world to sleep, nothing else matters as the matter in the feet begin to buckle and bend until the blisters form, boiling with the friction of fast air.

: and all the while I am falling, with not even nothing - nothing would be something - there is only true and unfiltered nothing, the one-eyed one-horned flying nothing that evaporates everything that ever was or ever will be.

I put my pen down and find comfort in a colon. I pile up all the books and pieces of scrap paper and pens and pencil sharpeners and chair legs and tables on the top of my head and hope that they all sink into me and drown the nothing. My stomach is ocean-blue from the ink, the calming blue inking forgetfulness over the blank page. I finally have something to think about. For a few seconds, or maybe a minute.

Just in time too. A person walks in and I rejoice invisibly: I can already touch their oozing flow of stress spilling into the empty classroom. It's Adriana. I know Adriana: I spoke to her quite a bit in the fourth and fifth year of my school years, before everything had gotten lighter, and before I had to start filling up pages with black dribble. She was apparently exceedingly pretty, but I recognised her mostly for the way she emoted: raw unfiltered chemical emotion, so finely textured - its gastral weight suffocating the nothing so quickly that I could instantly be at ease whenever she would talk to me.

Adriana wore her anxious face when she walked in through the blue doors. It was a fine piece: palatable and fashionable - it gives me something to copy, and also, something to say to her, a question with a required and objective answer. ""Are you feeling okay?""

"I just- it's Connor." Oh how delicious, now she swaps the stress face for the angry one. A favourite of mine: I love the way her eyebrows curl and her mouth sags down to the left ever so slightly. "He's such a dick! I could just punch him right now!"

I drag my eyebrows into the same curl as hers whilst carving the word "angry" into my forehead with the pencil sharpener. ""How so?"" My legs and arms have started to sway gently in unison, my knees bobbing up and then drowning soothingly. There is a longing to pluck out individual eyebrow follicles so I can match the exact level of dead skin and grime that swims inbetween the hairs.

She scrapes the chair out, disturbing the lines of the carpet and crashing the light blue plastic into the table. The drama of it all was pulling my head under: reverse falling, restrained to unreality. She dropped her head down away from me, panicking me for a brief freeing second, before she locked eyes again, anchoring me. "He's such an asshole all the time. He's so controlling and manipulative and… he…"

Oh the tears. Yes, the tears. This is what I live for. I imagine the popcorn in my hands, dark blue stripes on the cardboard container, the film reel playing at one frame a second as I watch and analyse the tilt of her head, the swelling of her tear ducts, the rise and fall of her chest, the gentle closing of her curtain eyes, the blue-ink iris handcuffing me to the edge of my seat, the sway of her chin, coastline eyebrows rising, the tide of her overwhelming sadness washing over me. This is my only reason for existing.

I am but a salt-encrusted mirror; reflecting the film projection so that what she sees is herself, facing her with her own face, an endless looping reel of melancholic salt-water tears. She sees what she wants to see, and this will comfort her. Knowing this consoles me. This is my reason for living.

She sniffs, the slipstream of the tears wiped away with a single wave of her hand. Another riptide shreds through her whole body; her shoulders rocking her stomach, her hands not able to scoop the water out quick enough. This is delightful, I don't even have to think about having to think anymore. So pretty, the infinity of endless water: all-encompassing, all-powerful. All-everything.

"He- I think- I think I…" She is suffocating; no air to breath, nothing but the misery pouring into our heads.

""It's okay. Let it all out."" The response ebbs and flows so naturally from my waterlogged mouth that I almost mistake it for being my own words.

"I think I'm going to break… up with him."

Bravo! What a magnificent showing, what a performance! I throw my imaginary soggy popcorn up into the air as hands clap until the sweat drips and voices cheer until the throats dry up. The credits roll until the reel burns and the audience vomits up seaweed and sand. A titanic level of emotion: it feels so filling.

"I know I can do so much better than him." I can tell she has been thinking this over for many sleepless nights. The idea of all that misery runs a current in me. I pray that we will continue this another time. For now, it seems the tide has reached its peak. She calms to a neutral appearance. For now, I am satiated.

""I know you can."" That was a good response. I keep all of my responses in a pile next to my film reels, for ease of use.

"I know you know I know. You're so understanding. You're one of my favourite people." A sense of nervous joy is starting to creep its way into her words. I rise a little, disliking where this is going: joy is difficult.

""Thank you."" It was difficult to replicate her exact arrangement there; her jaw was slightly ajar, the jellyfish nose scrunched up, her eyes smiling. I scramble to find the correct reel, and from there, the correct frame to dissect.

Somehow, even after all that water, she breathes in air.

"I like that you listen to me. I like that I could tell you anything, and you could relate to it. I like the way you make me feel queasy whenever I walk into the room and see you drawing and doodling the little pictures that you do. I like your eye contact. I like that you always say the right thing. I really, really like you."

That is possibly the worst thing I've ever heard. Oh no, and now she is reaching for me, trying to pull me back to the surface.

She loosens her eye contact, allowing me to drift away slightly. I do not want to drift. Let me sink please. I look for a pen to ink and forget but there is nothing, only water and the glimmer of a rising sun. I don't want to be saved.

I try to hold onto the projector, using it as a weight to hold me down to the ocean floor, but soon it disappears, along with all my film reels, all my pre-written responses, all the popcorn. Her hand is not tentacle-like: it is a beam of sunlight penetrating the darkness, searching for a sign of life, trying to save me. I don't want to be saved. I want to be smothered.

: I feel the warmth of her skin as she puts her left hand in mine, the aura of sunshine causes all of my stolen thoughts to condensate into a cumulus that floats away from the grasp of my desperate mind. She feels so terribly hot that it scorches the sheets of blue ink paper strewn across the table, catching fire in a finite trail that leads to my chest. She puts her free hand there as if it all means nothing at all.

Immediately after she touches the place where my heart should be, I throw up all my vital organs onto the carpet, like a seasickness. First my lungs; cold, purple, and full of water. Then my soaken spleen, then my leech infested liver. The kidneys are the last to go, each of them welling up to the size of beach balls before bursting into nothingness. I feel empty and warm, nothing but red blood floating aimlessly around inside my insides with nothing to pump it round my body.

Adriana hesitates. Maybe she senses my lack of heart. She smiles with her mouth, a question hovering on her eyes. An unspoken question. She unstrips my thoughts, each one individually, letting them fly off into the sky until there is almost true nothing. Nothing, except for her.

Her paracord bracelet rubbing against the marks on my wrists; creating burgundy friction, burning the safety rope and cutting me off. Her hand on my heartless chest, letting go of my anchor, the last thing holding me down.

She leans in. Eyes close, smashing the mirror. Breath in so much empty air. Starting to float. Lips.

No feeling: I'm falling upwards.