OBLIVION [Thomesa]

twenty eight

S i x  M o n t h s  L a t e r
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What was she doing?
Teresa stared down at her hands.
She stared down at the callouses and the scars
that twisted across her knuckles,
like a ribbon writhing between her fingers.
Down at the droplets of water,
falling like silvery blue stars from the broken chrome faucet
as their life broke apart on two palms, and melted around thin fingers.
As if this water could wash the dirt and grime and blood away
that had settled in the prints of her fingers,
in the lines of her palm.
Staining her skin with blood so scarlet it would never wash away. Not really.
One diamond strikes across the shoulder,
streams of glass breaking off across the rough skin of her bare back.
Then two,
Then fifty,
leaving trails of pearls in the grime.
She lifted her gaze from her hands,
staring directly into the shower head, as rain pummeled her cheeks, steam rising.

She felt the hot water as it broke up the tension of her muscles,
forcing her to relax if even just slightly.
She lets a few boiling drops fall on her tongue and slide down her throat,
wondering if perhaps it could soothe her soul as well,
and dispel her gritty nightmares.

She trembled,
like a loose window shutter in a storm
of great violence.

Closing her eyes, her hands curl around herself,
hugging her stomach tightly.
She rips her walls down,
let's the emotion run down her cheeks and down her wrists.
She reminds herself that she is still human.
Reminding herself that she was not him.

Her stiffly sweet smile fades, melting like cotton candy on wet lips,
and her toes painfully uncurl.
Her face twists in pain as she sobs once,
irises darting beneath her thin lid.

She falls to her knees, onto the cold tile, and cries.
One day,
two days,
six months,
passing like beads of water in a shower.
One drop,
two drops,
fifty.
Drip, drip.

She knew her friends were waiting for it,
waiting for her to finally snap, to break, to cry, to scream.
Expecting to see the cracks in the broken doll's face.
She once thought it safe to cry, when nestled between the cool touch of silk sheets in the night. But eventually she saw the light flickering from beneath her door, as a figure stood behind it. Thomas sat at her door at nights, listening to her talk in her sleep, wanting to be there when she woke screaming, sobbing, and breaking. He was suspicious still.

That I wasn't well, she thought.
That I hadn't really been getting any better.

But he didn't need to know that.
She became better at it.

She would wake from nightmares with a face as cold as stone,
Stealing the scream from her throat, with a sharp jab to the stomach.
Wasn't it sad? She felt like laughing, as she turned her face down to the tile, her forehead pressing against the cold marble as she sobbed.

The water raised and parted seamlessly around her scalp.
Wasn't it sad?

That she had finally been in so much pain for so long, been surrounded by nightmares by day and by night, that she could finally honestly say she was used to it?

She stepped out of the shower, not reaching for a towel.
Water dripped from her hair, down her back, to the carpet.
She didn't care.
She didn't care about tears anymore.
Why did everybody else?