Naïve

   She looks at me, her expression a look of incredulous.

   The look on her face is almost comical, as if she had just heard a joke and was wondering what was so funny about it. 

   “Excuse me?” she said, her voice flat. Then, as if I was an illiterate fool who couldn't understand simple English vocabulary, she added a hoax polite, "Come again?" Her friends giggled around her table, eyeing me amusingly as they slurped their coloured straws loudly.

   I felt my palms sweat, and I clenched and unclenched them, trying to find my voice again.

   “I-I like you, Haleigh.” 

   Her eyebrow is raised, her lips pulled back up into a smirk as her friend at her side elbow her, sniggering. "Listen - Ethan, did you say it was? Look, thanks and everything, but why are you telling me this in front of everyone?”

   Her voice was kind, apologetic, but her eyes betrayed her mock sincerity as they twinkled in amusement. Her words tumbled out of her mouth, and then fell to the floor around me, where the pieces of my failing heart joined them, like shattered stained glass - something beautiful, now broken.

   Ethan, thanks and everything, everything, why, Ethan?, in front of everyone, everyone and everything, thanks, thanks - why.

   She’s right. Why would someone like me - me - ever even think about liking someone like her? I didn’t deserve to. I could dream about all the things we could have been, would have been, never was and never ever will be, but in the end, they were just dreams. 

   It wasn’t the first time that I thought dreams were cruel.

   Her words went around and around and around in my mind, branding the humiliation into my brain like a permeant, ugly, black scar. The goosebumps rose on my skin as I felt the eyes of everyone in the vicinity trained on me, like I was an animal let loose in a zoo.

   My mouth wouldn't work anymore. I was mute. I couldn't find the words, didn't know how, and I wondered for a moment how the fuck did I used to speak - how did the words come to me? Who told me it was OK to say them? What are words in the first place? Why do they hurt me? 

   I knew the answers, I knew her answer, knew it the moment I persuaded myself to say it. Say it to her, say it out loud, say it.

   I wanted to give her everything, everything that was me. My love, my affection, my dreams, thoughts - I wanted to be her sky. But she was the moon in my sky, and she gave me nothing, nothing - because I was merely a star in hers.  

   She was still staring at me, her cheeks trembling as she tried to hold back her laughter. I felt eyes give me a once over, felt the patronising stares and the whispered words, analysing me, taking me apart and putting me back together again - an ugly, stupid, not me version of myself.

   “He’s the guys who tired to throw himself out a window.”

   “I thought he had died already - he’s such an attention seeking whore.”

   “He likes Haleigh? Oh my god, the poor girl!”

   Haleigh’s eyes find me, and they are more vivid and green and wild and I find that no matter how many times she humiliates me my throat always constricts and my traitorous cheeks flame whenever our eyes meet.

   Her eyes bored into mine, and I scramble to say something - anything - to her, thank her, tell her I love her, I always have, forever-

   But she is not listening.

   She has turned around, her eyes on someone that has walked into the room, and she is watching him as he is watching her, the endearment so clear in their eyes that it was almost tangible. But of course, of course it is him. 

   It is always him she sees. 

   Always. 

   I did what I did best: with flaming cheeks and a bitter taste in my mouth, I ran, leaving my scattered heart on the ground with her malignant words that makes my blood run poison. 

   I ran till my knees gave away, sent me crashing to the ground, where I curled into a feral position and rocked back and forth, forth and back till Florence came and found me. But I was fine - I was, because as soon as I had left the room and as soon as their eyes left me, I felt a whole world lighter, like it was them constantly looking and poking and probing at me that made me feel like my skin was smothering me, like they were sempiternal hands squeezing me, my voice, my mind, my heart till everything suffocates, stops.

   “They tell you to voice your thoughts, not take anyone's shit, be yourself. They tell us we are all beautiful, no matter our colour, size, race, or who we were or what we liked - and yet, and yet-” I know that my voice is breaking, and she continues to whisper in my ear, telling me it will be okay. “-And yet the moment I try, everything around me crashes like it was fragile to begin with, and then something inside me snaps, like a twig in half, and it stays that way and keeps breaking again and again and again each time I try, and try, and try. And it is them, they who said it was OK, who told us that people like I would be accepted - who shove their shit down our throats as they smile as at with gleaming knives behind their backs.”

   She tried to comfort me, but I didn’t want comfort. I want poetry. I want danger. I want freedom. I wanted razor blades. I wanted to go to Heaven. I wanted sin. But more than anything, I wanted the girl who I could never have. 

   “I thought I was getting better,” I cry, “I swear I was, they told me I was, it was fine, I was fine.”

   I breathed out, ragged, heavy breathes like a stormy ocean, my shoulders heaving. Florence steps away, a sad smile ghosted on her lips.

   “Oh, sweet, sweet Ethan - you are so naïve.” 

   I flinched, as if I had been physically struck. The truth hurt, and no matter how much I wanted to not hear it, it will come out. Like a wild animal, the truth is too powerful to remain caged. Sooner or later, it will break free of its lies that cage it and eat me alive. 

   At home, it is the usual. 

   The pills are my Peter Pan and I am at their Wendy. 

   “Forget them, Ethan. Forget them all. Come with me where you’ll never, never have to worry about all this crap again.”

   They whisper sweet words in my ear, so that I may fall again,

   back into the birdcage.