Imperfect

3: Horizon

Horizon by The Typewriters 13

make a wish on blood and pain

that I could go to the horizon and try again

Kayla

It's close to midnight. I sit below the evergreen tree, gazing above me. Beyond the forest, the world is going to sleep, the dying lights flickering like fire in the moonlight.

I can't see the stars anymore, merely thickets of trees covering the night sky above. Never after I left could I see it again. The memories of us, sitting under the peace and protection of the night, counting the stars, are no more than faint memories of happier, innocent times. I scroll through the messages on my phone. My cousin's messaged: how are you? haven't heard from you for some time yeah? I sigh. Unlike you, I never got a happy ending with my friends, I think. How did you do that? Overcome all your fears? I remember seeing her when I was much younger, how her sea-green eyes were filled with fear. She'd just lost her whole family to a fire, her parents and her brother. I remember thinking: thank god I'm not her. thank god I have a family. I smile-bitterly- at the irony, how I've become the person who I pitied.

Are you thinking of me, Ash? 'Cause I miss you.

But I can't go back. There's no such things as do-overs, remember that? I know I've hurt you, and I'm not going to be selfish and pretend it's all your fault that caused us to be separated when the truth is it was me.

I've said this so many times, and I know "I'm sorry" can't fill the empty feeling we get when someone moves on without us , but Ash?

I'm so, so, sorry.

I planned to stay awake for so much longer, but the events of the past few weeks have drained me, and I'm so, so tired.

And in my dreams, I'm free again. Sometimes.

-

I take a breath, forcing oxygen into my lungs although they're burning. This is all in my head and I know it. But the grey walls and wooden flooring are more than familiar; I could never forget the place I lost my world to something I never meant to do, never in a thousand years.

You never meant anything to me, haven't you realised that by now? I sigh. That pretty much summed up my whole life. Cast aside by classmates, sitting in the corner of the class, book in my hands as a party goes on in front. They saw me as a model student, but I never meant anything to anyone, not enough for me to leave a mark in someone's life, no matter how much they meant to me. I remember how those words were enough for a 13-year-old to take the life from a person who had raised her from birth no matter if he wanted to or not.

Broken sea-green eyes, the colour of the ocean.

Her eyes, originally devoid of light, burned with their own fire: a flame, not of hope, not happiness, not anymore. Anger, frustration, pent-up emotions.

Her world is on fire.